My Old Lady

My Old Lady is the feature film directorial début from playwright Israel Horovitz (Line, What Strong Fences Make, The Indian Wants the Bronx). Kevin Kline stars as Mathias, a broke, middle-aged New Yorker who inherits a large, valuable, Parisian apartment from his estranged father. When he travels to Paris to liquidate the property, he discovers he’s bound by an ancient French real estate contract with complex rules about possession and resale. Maggie Smith plays Mathilde, an elderly Englishwoman who has lived in the apartment for decades. Not only must Mathias allow Mathilde to stay there until her death, he must also make monthly payments to her for upkeep. When he decides to stay in one of her guestrooms while he assesses his options, he incurs the wrath of her prickly, unwelcoming daughter, played by Kristin Scott Thomas.

While this sounds like the premise of a sub-par sitcom or an under-populated farce, My Old Lady is a surprisingly astute philosophical study of depression and loneliness. Though flawed, the thoughtful, seriocomic script is ideally suited to the cast. Looking at the film’s poster or trailer, you’d be forgiven for assuming a movie that stars Kline as a likable rogue, Smith as a feisty dowager, and Scott Thomas as a haughty ice queen would be predictable, riddled with clichés, and too reminiscent of countless other films. But Horovitz never paints his characters with too broad a brush, and the performances he elicits from his leads are restrained and absorbing. All three of these actors are capable of greatness, but they have each been guilty in the past of performing on autopilot--especially when they’re working with lazily written material or directors who encourage them to overplay their well-honed shtick. In this film they each play the type of role we love to see them in, without ever devolving into caricature or banality. Horovitz and his cast create distinctive, well-rounded individuals who each use their chosen way of presenting in the world to conceal their damaged humanity. 

The film’s theatrical origins are a little too pronounced. The stage-bound quality that hangs over the proceedings wouldn’t be as much of an issue if the ending were a bit more satisfying. Like many recent films adapted from plays--Carnage, Frost/Nixon, Jack Goes Boating--the ending feels unnecessarily rushed. Its as if filmmakers don’t trust material that worked well in the theater to play for a more impatient movie audience. Were it not for this picture’s excessively tidy ending I would rank My Old Lady higher in this year’s list of strong melancholy comedies like The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Skeleton Twins, and The F Word. Still, this is an enjoyable picture that offers not only the comedic situations and barbed exchanges of dialogue we expect from the title and premise; it also provides well articulated insights into the many ways people conceal pain.