Image: adelaidefilmfestival.org
The sum of $630 is all it takes to spur Elle Reid (Lily Tomlin, TV’s Grace and Frankie) into action in Grandma, and gives Tomlin a role that matches her talents.
The figure represents the amount Elle’s granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For) requires for an abortion, a topic the teenager dare not broach with her overworked mother (Marcia Gay Harden, Fifty Shades of Grey), and a situation that her boyfriend (Nat Wolff, Paper Towns) cares little for. The part represents not only Tomlin’s first lead role since 1988’s Big Business, but a winning showcase of her emotional depth and acerbic wit.
In the latest feature from writer/director Paul Weitz (Admission), the fiercely frank seventy-something Elle is more than the titular matriarch. Indeed, that’s a moniker the misanthrope wears begrudgingly, even as she takes to assisting her offspring’s offspring with an unwanted pregnancy. Elle’s own status — both as a writer and poet struggling with the modern incarnation of her chosen field, as a widow still grieving the loss of her long-term life partner, and as the party ending her most recent relationship with the much younger Olivia (Judy Greer, Ant-Man) — shapes her sense of self more than her family ties, though spending quality time with Sage helps shift the balance.
Weitz has crafted a simple story, but a smart one — as well as an effort that charts the course of a day by skipping between episodic vignettes, yet never feels flimsy or cursorily sketched out. Each incident, including the blasts from the past that comprise much of the central twosome’s attempts to secure the requisite cash, do more than showcase bit players such as Laverne Cox (Orange is the New Black), John Cho (Star Trek Into Darkness) and Sam Elliott (Draft Day), or insert drama into the tale; they add shades of complexity to both characters and relationships.
Such assured, astute and female-centric writing, perhaps a surprise from the filmmaker who came to fame with raucous teen comedy American Pie and was otherwise at his best to date with Nick Hornby adaptation About A Boy, shines in what becomes an amusing and insightful look at moving through regrets and reconciling the consequences of choices made long ago. Weitz shoots the feature with warmth, sensitivity and intimacy to match, honing in not on the big issues but on the small yet relatable scale of the drama that resonates through the three generations of women that drive the narrative.
Of course, the script sings when enlivened by the equally feisty and cantankerous Tomlin, just as the imagery brightens in her presence. That Weitz wrote the role for her after working with the actress on Admission is easy to understand after spending only minutes in the protagonist’s company, even if the remainder of the cast — the fragile Garner, the yearning Greer and the mournful Elliott most notably — also offer up poignant and perceptive portrayals. If her co-stars provide the weaving branches that intersect with the pivotal character study, Tomlin comprises the weathered, textured trunk they all happily stem from. Here, she’s wizened, weary and wry, and, to the movie’s benefit, at her best.
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
Grandma
Director: Paul Weitz
US, 2015, 79 mins
Queer Screen Film Fest 2015
September 22 – 27
Adelaide Film Festival 2015
October 15 – 25
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