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Movie Review: “My Old Lady” Shines With A Cultivated Cast

[yasr_overall_rating]

An American inherits an apartment in Paris that comes with an unexpected resident.

“My Old Lady” is a wonderful movie filled with a perfect ensemble of three of today’s finest actors, Kevin Kline, Maggie Smith and Kristin Scott Thomas. The story takes place entirely in France when Mathias (Kevin Kline) arrives in Paris to inherit an apartment that his recently deceased father entrusted to him. Arriving with practically no luggage and down to his last dollar, he views the apartment as a means to an end, a way to make some money and then travel around Europe. When he enters the apartment, he happens upon Mathilde (Maggie Smith) and her daughter Chloé (Kristin Scott Thomas) and quickly finds out that the apartment is a “viager” – an old-fashioned French system for buying and selling apartments and that he won’t actually be able to acquire the residence until Mathilde dies.

He also learns that he must pay her a stipend until such time that she passes away, abiding by the rules of viager. Initially, Mathias is outraged but after consulting an attorney and realizing that there’s absolutely nothing he can do, he decides to stay while he tries to sort everything out. Over time, he and Mathilde get to know each other and while he and Chloé loathe each other upon first meeting, all of their lives are changed when they learn that Mathilde was his father’s lover and that he spent more time with and bestowed upon her, unconditional love, while he and his mother were left out in the cold. This affair would eventually compel his mother to commit suicide and prompt an estranged relationship between father and son. There are no plot twists or turns, no explosions or alien abductions on display here, just some good-old fashioned storytelling accompanied by some terrific performances.

While Mathias has always blamed his father for everything that has ever gone wrong in his life, gradually, through adapting to life with Mathilde and Chloé, the most unexpected of friends and eventually family, he realizes that he would much rather have these people in his life than spend the rest of it alone and angry. Watching this realization in the hands of a master thespian such as Mr. Kline, is why we go to see movies in the first place. “My Old Lady” is an immensely subtle film where we don’t have to hear all the important material, instead, we see it in a character’s facial expression or in their body language.

Maggie Smith shines as an aging and distinctly unglamorous woman who is very unapologetic for the devotion and passion she obtained from her lover, much to Mathias’ chagrin while Kristin Scott Thomas is, at the beginning, energetic and full of life, a woman who appears to have everything together, only to realize that she is just as sad and broken as Mathias at her mother’s betrayal of her own father. Israel Horovitz directs the movie based on his play and does so with great aplomb and proficiency and creates a genuinely authentic story full of vibrant and veracious performances.

In theaters now

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James McDonald

Originally from Dublin, Ireland, James is a Movie Critic with 40 years of experience in the film industry as an Award-Winning Filmmaker. He is also a member of the Critics Choice Association and the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association.