My Old Lady

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Israel Horovitz/Starring: Maggie Smith, Kevin Kline and Kristin Scott Thomas

Theater scribe Israel Horovitz dresses up his play of the same name for the big screen while appointing some considerable talent to key roles.

Kevin Kline plays Mathias Gold, a newly-arrived New Yorker to Paris, who is in the city to claim an apartment his father has willed to him. Upon entering his inheritance, he finds an elderly lady named Mathilde Girard, a British ex-patriate; who has been occupying the residence for decades. To Mathias' horror, he learns the apartment is a viager; an odd, french real-estate term that refers to a life-annuity a buyer pays to the seller until the latter's death. Although one can occupy said home, he or she cannot claim ownership until the seller passes away (I think I got that right).

Mathias discovers his father (who he was estranged from in life and whom he despised), hasn't left him with clear ownership, which he finds to be a kind of posthumous jab from the grave.

Broke and without a reason to return to New York, Mathias relies on the future sale of the house--a modest-looking but very pricey piece of Parisian real-estate--to fully emancipate himself financially. Mathilde allows him to stay until he can get handle on his situation.

Learning Mathilde is ninety-years-old, he visits her doctor, hoping to ascertain the old woman's physical status. The doctor's distaste for his visit is eloquently written in a scowl. To Mathias' dismay, the doctor smugly informs him Mathilde is a robust ninety and could conceivably live beyond one-hundred. The doctor also informs him Mathilde is her english teacher, which subtly conveys her allegiance to the old woman.

While Mathias hatches a plan to sell the apartment to a shady real-estate creep, he gets to know Mathilde and she him. He divulges details of his pathetic life; failed marriages, unpublished books and a friendless middle-age, while Mathilde mentions a former marriage and having a husband (now deceased)--who loved to hunt.

While lying in bed one day, surrounded by Mathilde's former husband's hunting trophies, Mathias rises from the bed to visit the bathroom, only to encounter a middle-age woman, who turns out to be Mathilde's daughter Chloe (Kristin Scott Thomas). The two are immediate adversaries. Mathias is seen as an unlawful intruder by Chloe, while he sees the two women as an obstacle to estate liquidation.

While spying on Chloe and her lover in the street one day, he watches as a mortifying incident unfolds. As Chloe approaches her lover, she notices his wife and kids sitting in an outdoor cafe, watching her. While her lover coaxes her to leave, the wife glares, humiliating Chloe, which lays the groundwork for her imminent break-up with her lover. Mathias uses the incident as a means to a moral high-ground but also as a way to dispel the superciliousness Chloe feels toward him.

The conflict between Chloe and Mathias becomes incendiary; concealing sparks of romance as both learn their present lives were shaped by identical, tragic pasts involving his father.

Though I feel I've seen Paris more than any other city in movies this year, its visual charms never falter. It also seems to be a place where those seeking to repair their lives or relationships find illumination or closure, such as Le Weekend. The same can be said for Horovitz's film, where the City of Lights acts as a sort of agent of reconciliation and rapprochement.

I thought the characterization offered surprises. Mathias, Mathilde and Chloe show their nuanced colors in the form of emotional frailties and unsympathetic behaviour.

But I had problems with the film. While Smith and Thomas always nail their character's jumble of pain and anxiety, which reach like tentacles from the past, Kline has never convinced me he can manage drama effectively. He can be hammy and unnatural and his transitions from the antic to the solemn are never seamless.

Like most films adapted from stage plays, My Old Lady is hobbled by theatrical conventions of narrative: plot exposition followed by dark revelations, then crisis then neat resolution. Another problem with play adaptations is that they feel like theater rather than cinema. Some directors can erase the barrier but more often than not, such films tend to be un-cinematic. One might come away from Horovitz's film entertained and appreciative of--if not enchanted by--the performances. But a weary indifference might also trail after one on the way to one's vehicle. One might be surprised by the film's lack of resonance, given the setting, the cast and the director's writing credentials but one may not care that one is surprised, which is another problem.