LONDON CITY NIGHTS

Friday, November 14, 2014

'My Old Lady' (2014) directed by Israel Horowitz

Friday, November 14, 2014 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

If you're a fan of French probate and property law then boy oh boy do I have a movie for you.  The excitingly titled My Old Lady (adapted from the director's own play!) starts with a bang – explaining the intricacies of the French viager system.  This is real adrenaline rush cinema, your heart thumping in your chest as you learn that the viager system is a system that allows elderly homeowners to realise the monetary value of their property as a lump sum (and also to receive an index-linked monthly stipend) while still remaining occupants until their death, at which point ownership of the property will transfer to the viager investor.  

Essentially, the prospective buyer weighs the amount of the lump sum (plus the stipend) against the market value of the property and the life expectancy of the occupant and decides whether he (or she) is going to get a good deal.  Now who needs Dwayne (the Rock) Johnson firing a minigun from a burning car that's also jumping through a massive explosion when you have action-packed cinema like this?!

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…. okay fine I admit it this film is fucking booooooooring.  

Boring isn't the kind of word I throw around lightly, but for nearly every one of it's 107 minutes, My Old Lady is deeply, almostly masterfully, boring.  Here's the situation; broke alcoholic loser Mathias Gold (Kevin Kline) arrives in Paris having been beqeathed a house in his father's will.  He intends to make a quick sale and skedaddle with the cash, but is stymied when he discovers that his father had entered into a viager with the elderly occupant.

The titular old lady is Mathilde Girard (Maggie Smith), a 93 year old English teacher who is very comfortable with Mathias' father's viager.  She reveals to a dumbstruck Mathias that he must pay her for the privilege of living in what is essentially 'his' house.  Complicating matters is the presence of her daughter Chloe (Kristin Scott Thomas), who immediately recognises Mathias as an opportunistic loser out to ruin their idyllic life.

The rest of the film charts Mathias' explorations of the French property law, his attempts to broker a deal for his stake in the viager and the growth of his relationship with Mathilde and Chloe, both of whom turn out to be more involved in his past than he first suspected.

Nearly entirely taking place within Mathilde's dark, dusty house, every inch of this feels like a stage adaptation.  There's the odd jaunt out into the streets of Paris, but they're bizarrely devoid of life as if the populace had collectively decided to have an extended lie-in (and to be honest I don't blame them).  This zeroes the drama in on Matthias, Mathilde and Girard, who, despite efforts to inject a bit of sizzle into their past are all rather dowdy, dull characters.

Mathias in particular is a deeply annoying protagonist, spending much of the latter half of the film drunkenly wandering about, wine bottle in hand, delivering misery-laced monologues about how crap his life is, how everybody has let him down and how horrible a person he is.  Kline's supercilious performance style only serves to underline these annoying qualities.  Let's face it, there are few things more tedious than a self-pitying pisshead, very quickly you find yourself wishing the very worst upon him.  

Maggie Smith and Kristin Scott Thomas come out of this largely unscathed, but these are actors so talented that they can find something of worth even in the biggest heap of garbage. Smith in particular makes Mathilde quietly likeable, constantly hinting at a carefree Bohemian life without giving us too many particulars.  She works on the principle that “precision is key to a long life”, a proverb that may as well also apply to Smith's acting style, working out every little flicker of the eyes or pursing of the lips to maximise our potential.

Scott-Thomas isn't given a lot to work with, but she latches onto Chloe's existential blues, showing us someone who has gotten used to setting her expectations low.  Given that she's the one giving lameass sadsack Mathias a hard time we warm to her pretty quickly. Unfortunately the hard work of both women is undone by a series of revelations that make them mere cogs in Mathias' self actualisation.  They submissively accept the abuse that Mathias heaps upon them, topped off with the ludicrous development of Chloe falling in love with Mathias.  This is bizarre! The stuffed animals that populate the flat are a better romantic prospect than Mathias; a man any self respecting woman wouldn't let within 5 feet of her.

With its middle-aged to elderly cast My Old Lady is perhaps aiming for the now-lucrative silver screener audience.  But surely even these audiences don't want an outright boring experience.  With its muffled drama, hugely annoying protagonist, dull scenery, focus on financial affairs and tortoise-slow pace, the film is about as much fun as being stuck in an accountant's waiting room.  

★★

My Old Lady is released 21st November 2014

Sunday, December 29, 2013

'Last Vegas' (2013) directed by John Turtletaub

Sunday, December 29, 2013 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

The nicest thing I can say about Last Vegas is that it isn’t quite as bad as it so obviously should be. High praise indeed for a film that takes De Niro, a titan of cinema if there ever was one, and subjects him to an excruciating scene where a whooping moron grinds his thong clad groin in his face to the thumping beat of LFMAO’s Party Rock Anthem.  Suddenly Taxi Driver feels like a film from an alternate (better) reality.  The inception of the film was obviously 'The Hangover but with famous old dudes' - a pitch so safe that studio heads probably began writing cheques so fast their pens blurred. And so we wind up with Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline do Vegas, a quartet whose combined star power is so colossal that this movie can only be so bad, right? R-right? 

The four play a gang of childhood friends who find themselves scattered across the country in their old age; Michael Douglas' Billy is desperately clinging to the last vestiges of his youth, preparing for marriage to a woman more than half his age; Kevin Kline’s Sam is living a horrible living dead life in Florida, impotent and emasculated; Morgan Freeman’s Archie is recovering from a stroke and consequently being infantilised by his overbearing son; and, most depressingly of all, Robert De Niro’s Paddy is a grumpy widower leading an isolated existence in a mausoleum to his dead wife. With Billy’s impending marriage the stage is set for one final big blowout, the four men throwing caution to the wind escaping to Vegas.

With that setup the script practically writes itself, each hilarious comedy encounter leading the four men towards re-igniting the dynamic spark of youth buried deep inside.  The film thus becomes a series of set-pieces in which the central joke is always is always an old fart having to deal with a situation usually suited for a much younger man. The film parades through nightclubs pumping out dirty bass, plastic fantastic bikini pool parties, high stakes gambling games and via an increasingly improbable amount of young, beautiful women willing to overlook their wrinkled, craggy exteriors and appreciate our heroes inner beauty.

Even the press pack screengrabs are bereft of style.

This is a cliche-written crapfest of a story, but for all the groanworthy narrative developments, Last Vegas never quite strays into the actually dire, settling on homogenous 'there-ness'. The critical mass of acting talent means that though the material is unquestionably middle-of-the-road, thankfully no-one humiliates themselves - their combined screen presence papering over the numerous cracks in the film. 

Turtletaub’s direction is quietly competent, though absent of pizzazz. There’s the odd heavyhanded yet workable moment; like Douglas’ Billy finally realising he should come to terms with his age while surrounded by ruined neon signs from the Sinatra-era, and a climactic party sequence is at at least visually busy and nicely colourful.  This anonymous, workmanlike directorial style is probably a hell of a lot more difficult to achieve than it looks, yet, frankly, it's just not very interesting to watch.  Mercifully the pacing is pretty brisk - a product of a palpable and grim determination threaded through the entire production to get this shit out of the way in as professional and competent a manner as possible so everyone can get back to doing what they actually want to do in life.

The four actors at the centre of the film appear to be largely sleepwalking through this, with good reason, De Niro in particular continuing to squandermuch of the recent goodwill he chalked up with Silver Linings Playbook - a performance that now feels like an exception to the rule rather than any indication of a late cinematic renaissance for him.  Douglas suffers from a rather cartoonish and underwritten role, a sharp contrast from his intricately realised Liberace in Behind the Candelabra.  The only small mis-step is Kevin Kline, who just isn't quite on the same cinematic level as the other three, his casting looking suspiciously like the backup choice after Bill Murray declined.

I can't think of anything interesting to say about this.  I like Morgan Freeman's jacket I guess.

By the climax we're up to our knees in syrupy bullshit as the men finally arrive at the predestined emotional endpoints that've been telegraphed since the first ten minutes. This is a film with zero surprises, dull visuals and a condescendingly obvious message; a film with all the rough and interesting edges sandpapered away with the aim of producing a bland, forgettable product rather than anything worthwhile.  That said, there are a few things to like.

Prime among them is Mary Steenburgen as the principal love interest.  She's one of those actors that you'd never think to name as a favourite yet improves practically any production she turns up in. It's nice to see her cast in a properly romantic role rather than the sexless, maternally school-marmish roles women her age usually end up saddled with.  Another point in the film's favour is a nice surprise in its treatment of trans people.  There's a gag where Kevin Kline goes into a Vegas bar and unbeknownst to him, starts chatting up a broad-shouldered drag queen.  At this point I was shrinking into my seat, this ancient comedy setup generally leading to embarrassingly shite 'chicks with dicks' material.  But for once the film zigs where it usually zags, even allowing these side-characters a nice trans-positive coda in the final sequence.

That isn't really enough to warrant seeing this though, Last Vegas is about as unremarkable a film as its possible to be.  Your life will not be enriched in anyway by this film, whether you see it for not.  It's just there: now a fact of our lives like the English Channel or Cumulonimbus clouds, like the music of Leona Lewis or Countdown.  Just another title that'll spin past unwatched in the comedies section of Netflix for years and years to come.  That it's maybe not as bad as it could be is faint praise indeed - Last Vegas is the very definition of unremarkable.

★★ 

Last Vegas is on general release from January 3rd