My Old Lady **** (2014, Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith) – Movie Review

American playwright Israel Horovitz writes the amusing, poignant and charming screenplay and directs this welcome movie based on his 2002 stage play. Kevin Kline and Maggie Smith are both tremendous value as an American who inherits his dad’s apartment in Paris and the surprise resident it comes complete with. She’s a sitting tenant who can sit there till she dies – which looks like for ever. She’s more than a sitting tenant – he’s got to pay her a monthly fee!

My Old Lady is three things – funny, serious, sad. Really liked the funny parts of My Old Lady, of which there are many, but the serious bits (fortunately much fewer) less. Actually, My Old Lady is four things – it’s a showcase for what Kline and Smith can do to entrance us.

Kline plays failed playwright Mathias Gold, who arrives to take over the comfy old home left to him by the father he loathes, but finds an ancient French law hasn’t given him vacant possession. He’s shocked to find also inherits the Old Lady, Mathilde Girard [spoiler alert], who was of course dad’s lover back in the day, and her daughter Chloe, Kristin Scott Thomas. Obvious question next is, is Chloe Mathias’s brother? That could get real significant is, against the odds, they started to fall for each other.

Though Noémie Lvovsky makes a strong impression as Dr Florence Horowitz, and so do Dominique Pinon as the real estate agent Monsieur Lefebvre and Stéphane Freiss as the neurotic François Roy, the film is basically a three-hander. It’s very stagey and stage-bound, but that doesn’t matter this time. It’s the best thing Kline’s done for ages, and he seizes his chance gleefully and expertly.

Smith could recite the phone book and make it funny and charming, and here she’s got the bonus of good dialogue and a much bigger role than you’d expect from her ‘and Maggie Smith’ billing. You expect a two or three scene cameo and get a major performance. Great! It’s not quite such a good role for Scott Thomas, but she does her full highly professional job on it, managing to be both tough and tender in one very capably fleshed-out performance.

Everybody’s got a lot of emotional baggage to dump, so there’s a lot of soul searching and wine drinking – well, it’s Paris, isn’t it ? You’d have to be very churlish indeed to take against the charms of My Old Lady and its much-loved trio of arresting actors.

The film is Horovitz’s directorial debut. Maggie Smith and Kristin Scott Thomas have played mother and daughter after Keeping Mum. [Spoiler alert] It’s the second time Kevin Kline and Scott Thomas have played a movie’s love interest after Life as a House. Scott Thomas replaced Jane Birkin.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

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