What do you get when you mix a bit of Woody Allen’s New York, the shenanigans of an Isaac Bashevis Singer story, and a foreigner’s perspective? That’s pretty much what "Love Comes Lately" is all about. What is remarkable is that this latest English-language film by German director Jan Schütte tackles an aspect of American Jewish life that most filmmakers shy away from — that of an elderly New York Jew. Woody Allen struggled with his "existence" as an aging Jewish writer confronting the various demons from his past in his 1997 "Reconstructing Harry" and provided us with one of his best films. In that film, he finally took a good look at himself not only as a human being but as a Jew, as raconteur, filmmaker, and writer. Schütte takes a similar tack by not only using a Singer-like character as his protagonist but by having him go in and out of his own stories. It’s an unusual technique that Schütte uses successfully.

In fact, at the center of this film is Singer’s short story "Out of Love," which the filmmaker was drawn to years ago and which he adapted into a short 30-minute film in 2001, starring Otto Tausig and Tovah Feldshuh. He decided to go back to that story and meld it with two other Singer stories, "The Briefcase" and "Alone."

Schütte has been fascinated with the immigrant/émigré experience since coming to New York in the early 1980s. He, like many contemporary German filmmakers, has been drawn to Jews and caught up in trying to gain a clearer understanding of the Jewish experience. It might seem strange, but over the last decade, Poles, Czechs, and Germans have been knocking out film after film about Jews, the war years, and the years since. Schütte seems to have zeroed in on questions of immigration and several of his works deal with people coming to America as well as leaving America seeking something better. Generated from discussions Schütte had with émigrés he met while walking along the boardwalk in Brighton Beach, he created "Bye Bye America" in 1993, a film that depicts people searching for a homeland, a comfort zone. In his 2003 film "Supertex," his main protagonist is an affluent Jew who must confront change when something dire happens.

Somehow, Singer’s depiction of the immigrant Jew resonated for Schütte. The Jew may have been someone who was forced to leave Europe in the not-too-distant past because of the actions of Schütte’s countrymen.

Meet Max Kohn, a foreign-born writer with some fame who has a special relationship with Rayzele and often leaves town on the lecture circuit. When you first meet Kohn, you cannot help seeing Singer himself about to leave his West 86th Street apartment for one of his many trips out of town. Singer’s work is interjected with various flirtations and affairs, and Max is no stranger to this world as he goes in and out of character, moving between his fictional inventions and his real life, his committed relationship with Rayzele and his intrigues out of town.

A recurring theme in Singer’s work was the art of loving. In a note in the 1979 collection "Old Love," he observed: "The love of the old and the middle-aged is a theme that is recurring more and more in my works of fiction. Literature has neglected the old and their emotions. The novelists never told us that in love, as in other matters, the young are just beginners and that the art of loving matures with age and experience." Indeed, Max’s both real and imagined never-ending dream of love forms a centerpiece that drives this sometimes awkward but always gripping film about aging, loving, and the power of the narrative.

Otto Tausig is excellent as Max, as is the cast that includes Rhea Perlman, Tovah Feldshuh, Barbara Hershey, and Elizabeth Peña. The film opens today at the Lincoln Plaza cinema in Manhattan. Be ready for something a bit different.