FILM with Debbie Lynn Elias
My personal favorite of this week’s new releases is Israel Horovitz’s MY OLD LADY. Adapted by Horovitz from his own play, MY OLD LADY is about an American writer who inherits an apartment in Paris from his deceased father. On his last dollar, Mathias Gold heads to Paris to claim his inheritance only to find his building legally occupied by an old woman named Mathilde. Kevin Kline, Maggie Smith and Kristen Scott Thomas delight at every turn. Filled with charm and texture both visually and emotionally, My Old Lady captures the heart and tickles the funny bone from beginning to end. Set in Paris, visually Horovitz sweeps you up to a world of lightness and light, beauty and old world charm. Production design is beauteous while Michel Amathieu’s cinematography is breathtaking, celebrating an airiness, filling the apartment with white light, metaphorically and practically using windows to their utmost advantage.
When it comes to performance, there is a vibrancy of life that bubbles forth from the very patina of history and the yellow tinged memories of Smith’s Mathilde, recalling a happier time of days gone by. Kline and Smith are rapier perfection while Kristen Scott Thomas as Mathilde’s daughter is delicious with frustrated exasperated angst at which you can’t help but laugh. You will fall in love, as I have, with this film and these characters.
Rating: PG-13 Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes
Stars: Kevin Kline, Maggie Smith, Kristin Scott Thomas
Director: Israel Horovitz
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