Love Comes Lately

Elderly Jewish writer Max Kohn (Otto Tausig) is an Austrian émigré whose overactive mind is causing a state of perpetual confusion. He's a successful author of short stories who lives in New York City and is so old-fashioned that he believes that the only proper way to write is by using a typewriter. Max has several women interested in seducing him, but he spends most of his time with fellow worrier Reisel (Rhea Perlman). During a trip to speak in nearby Hanover Max begins editing his latest story—a wild tale of a Miami retiree who gets himself into various kinds of trouble. It doesn't take Max long to lose himself in his own writings, and pretty soon, he's mixed up in two sexy romances and an unsolved murder.

Upon returning to reality, Max begins to feel as if his own written words have begun to manifest themselves. A meeting with burned out former student Rosalie (Barbara Hershey), with whom he shares a mutual attraction, follows, and later while heading to Springfield for another unwanted speaking engagement Max discovers that he has lost the speech he prepared. After a series of small adventures, Max decides to start writing a new story based on his recent life and featuring a protagonist named Harry—a thinly veiled stand-in for himself.

• Otto Tausig as Max Kohn
• Rhea Perlman as Reisel
• John C. Vennema as Dr. Grosskopf
• Olivia Thirlby as Sylvia Brokeles
• Tovah Feldshuh as Ethel
• Bunny Levine as M.N.
• Brian Doyle-Murray as The Boss
• Elizabeth Peña as Esperanza
• Barbara Hershey as Rosalie
• Gurdeep Singh as H.P.
• Lee Wilkof as Professor Meyer

The film received a score of 70% on Rotten Tomatoes, indicating pretty good reviews.

From Nathan Lee at The New York Times:

Max Kohn (Otto Tausig), the aging Lothario of "Love Comes Lately", is very much like the movie itself: doddering and milquetoasty, but ultimately disarming. Blending three short stories by the Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, the filmmaker Jan Schütte may well have made a minor classic for the retired-Jews-of-Miami set.[1]

From Wesley Morris at The Boston Globe:

The writer and director Jan Schütte has distilled three Isaac Bashevis Singer stories into a mild 80-or-so-minute project whose length matches its hero's age. The idea's not terrible, and no filmmaker has bothered with Singer for years, but this movie chooses to reduce the author's soulfulness to mirrored tales of lonely, randy seniors, all of whom Tausig plays. In one sense, it's a disservice. Imagine a film based on some James Baldwin writings whose conclusion was: Boy, he was frisky. In another, the movie does get at a certain woe that's true to Singer's work.[3]

From Ruthe Stein at San Francisco Chronicle:

One of the best compliments to be paid a movie based on fiction is that it compels you to read other things by the author. "Love Comes Lately," based on three short stories by Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer, is likely to elicit such a response.[4]

• Love Comes Lately at IMDb
• Love Comes Lately at AllMovie
• Love Comes Lately at Rotten Tomatoes