Written and directed by acclaimed playwright Israel Horovitz, My Old Lady follows the fortunes of Mathias Gold, played by Kevin Kline, who inherits an apartment in Paris on the death of his estranged father.
After travelling to France on his last dime, however, Mathias discovers that the apartment still holds a tenant, and that under the ‘viager’ law, he will be unable to take ownership of the property until this tenant dies. Maggie Smith plays Gold’s tenant, 92-year-old Mathilde, while Kristin Scott-Thomas fills the role of Chloe, Mathilde’s daughter.
Both the cast and the plot of the film contain a whole bunch of confusing elements. Firstly, the combination of Kline, ever the incorrigible ham, with the likes of Smith and Scott-Thomas is a little jarring. Neither Smith nor Scott-Thomas seems able to keep up with Kline’s tendency to deliver every line like he’s playing the part of King Lear’s fool. Consequently, a lot of the ‘quirky humour’ that is attempted between the characters just doesn’t come off. The plot is equally confusing. The concept of the viager law is poorly explained and never seems to make enough sense for the whole narrative to hinge on this device. The film also swings quite constantly between comedy and tragedy, without doing either very satisfactorily.
The cinematography is quite beautiful at times, which at least makes the movie a little more watchable, aesthetically speaking. Dominique Pinon, in the role of real estate agent Monsieur Lefebvre, also offers brief moments of relief from the frustrating plot, simply by being generally charming as he always is.
My Old Lady is a gamble that just doesn’t pay off, and by the end of the film it’s hard to even really care what becomes of the three main characters.
2/5 stars
My Old Lady opens in cinemas Thursday November 13.
