The Battle Outside Is Raging-Maggie Smith’s My Old Lady

 

 

 

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

My Old Lady, starring Kevin Kline, Maggie Smith,  Kristin Scott-Thomas, 2014

Oh sure every once in a while Hollywood or somebody puts out a quirky little film like the one under review, My Old Lady  (an unfortunate term for the title since my frame of reference for the term, and the central male character’s as well stems from the 1960s when the term was used as a term of endearment, I guess, for your wife or girlfriend who most certainly was not an old lady since we did not recognize anybody over thirty and we would not have, in my circle anyway, called dear old mother such a term). Quirky? Well yes because it addresses in a semi-comical way what we now all know is a truism. That the battle, the inter-generational battle, we 50 and 60 somethings fought against our parents (and all authority) in the 1960s and early 1970s (that dear old mother over thirty who we did not recognize in our universe) never did really end, at least in some households.      

Here is what I mean. Mathias (played by Kevin Kline), a broke, broken down refugee from the ‘60s, is heir to a luxurious apartment in Paris (there are other luxurious apartments in the world although not in Paris but that setting makes this film work a little better) left by his now deceased father whom, well, let’s say they didn’t get along. And Mathias has the three divorces and the shrink bills to prove it, prove he was unloved by his father. So our man spends his last Euros to get to Paris and sell the unit and maybe get his twenty-seventh “fresh start” in life (if those ex-wives don’t find out about his current good fortune). Problem, problem number one is that he cannot sell the damn thing while one Mathilde is alive and well (she a British national who has lived in Paris since Django Reinhart’s time played, played naturally, by that age old institution Maggie Smith who has lost a step or seven since her Prime of Miss Jean Brodie days).

See Mathias’ father and Mathilde were lovers (while both we married to others, Mathias’ mother committing suicide over the matter) and he set her up in the apartment giving her, under an old French custom, a life tenancy in the place. So our boy has to not only look at the actuarial tables but figure out a way to get the “old lady” out and big dough into his hands. Now. Oh yeah, did I say that the “old lady” had a daughter, Chloe, a fetching daughter (played by Kristen Scott Thomas of The English Patient fame) who also wants to stay since she grew up in the place and has no place else to go. Chloe naturally takes an instant hate to the reckless and feckless Mathias.

But you know what is going to happen, know as sure as you know the father was not a good guy (although Mathilde’s take on him is obviously different even if he left her high and dry after his wife killed herself). Hollywood or something will trot out the old tried and true boy meets girl formula and they will get together. Not only that but dear sweet Mathilde will get to finish her days in her old place. And maybe, just maybe that battle Mathias had with his father will be “resolved” when somebody tries to buy the place when he is Maggie’s age. Yes, quirky, quirky indeed.