My Old Lady (Kevin Kline)

(Amazon UK link)

I had seen several recommendations for the DVD ‘My Old Lady’ on Amazon. Since Maggie Smith was listed as one of the main characters in it, and reviews were mostly positive, I added it to my wishlist and was given it for my recent birthday. Last night, we decided to watch it. We didn’t know what to expect, and liked it very much. 

Apparently the film is based on a play, and was directed by the play’s author who was in his mid seventies at the time. We thought he did an excellent job. There are just three main characters, and a handful of others who stand out; that’s typical of a stage production, and it works very well as a film.

The whole story is set in Paris, filmed on location. But one of the main characters is an American: Mathias (Kevin Kline) is a man in his sixties who has learned from a lawyer that he has inherited his father’s house. He has been having some financial problems, and has spent his last money on his flight.  

We quickly learn that Mathias didn’t have a good relationship with his father, and that he hasn’t inherited any money from him - that was all given to charity. However, he assumes he can sell the house in Paris which is reputed to be worth quite a lot due to its size and location.

What he doesn’t expect is that even this house comes with a sting in the tail: it was bought inexpensively under a French system known as ‘viager’. That meant that the house was occupied by an elderly lady called Mme Girard (Maggie Smith), the former owner of the house, and she would continue to live there until she died. Worse, Mathias must continue to make payments to her every month for as long as she lives.

He then discovers that Mme Girard’s daughter Chloe (Kristin Scott Thomas) also lives there, and she is very antagonistic to him…

There’s a lot in the film, which has some beautiful shots of Paris, some acerbic, perfectly timed humour (mostly from Maggie Smith’s character) and some deeply poignant reminiscences of childhood. Both Mathias and Chloe are lonely people, and while their lives have been very different, they discover that they have much in common.

The three main characters are so believable that I felt entirely drawn into the story. The supporting cast are realistic too, and it felt at times as if I knew the cast. Their screen chemistry and acting is impeccable. Maggie Smith (who was 80 when this film was made) plays a woman of 92 as well as she has all her many other superb roles over the year. 

The overall plot is perhaps a bit predictable, but that doesn’t much matter; it’s a character study as much as anything, a story about discoveries, and family loyalties, and the effects of infidelity. We were mesmerised. I had expected it to be more amusing than it turned out to be, based on the front cover: instead the humorous moments nicely balanced the deeper, more heart-wrenching sections of the film.

All in all, we liked it very much and were glad we watched it. The rating is 12A in the UK, PG-13 in the US. It’s not a film that would be of any interest to children - or teenagers, for that matter, as the main characters are in their sixties. But I’m surprised the censors didn’t rate it PG as there are no scenes of intimacy or nudity, almost no bad language, and no violence. 

The only ‘extra’ on this DVD is an interview with the author of the original play, who directed the film; it’s not too long and was very interesting.

Definitely recommended.

  Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews

Doctor Who: Flux, series 13 (Jodie Whittaker)

(Amazon UK link)

I had the thirteenth series of ‘Doctor Who’ on my wishlist for quite some time, so was very pleased when we were given the DVD set last Christmas.  We were coming to the end of the fourth ‘Father Brown’ series, which we had been watching on DVD, and when we finished that we watched ‘The Revolution of the Daleks’, a Doctor Who special which preceded the thirteenth series, and which had been in our to-be-watched drawer for over a year.

We started watching the thirteenth series - which has the title ‘Flux’ on the box - towards the end of February. There are only six episodes, but I was away for three weeks and we had only seen five of them. We watched the last episode (and the extras on the third DVD) last night. 

What an epic series it has been! Unusually for Doctor Who, the episodes are not complete in themselves, or even two-parters. They are essentially a six-part series, each episode ending with a dramatic cliff-hanger as the story continues. The overall theme is that a huge hurricane of anti-matter, known as The Flux, is sweeping across the entire universe causing devastation and wholesale destruction everywhere it goes.

Inevitably this eventually gets stopped in the final episode; that’s really no surprise. But there are many different subplots all blending together involving almost every enemy race that I could recall from the Doctor Who series. The daleks, the cybermen, the sontarans, the creepy weeping angels… all have their place in what feels like a very confusing but well-made series. 

My favourite parts of Doctor Who are the human interactions that take place, and the more emotional stories. The start of the first episode drew me right in: a young man called Dan (John Bishop) acts as an unofficial guide to parts of Liverpool. He’s clearly a generous person but also in financial straits. Strange things start happening to him and then he’s kidnapped by an alien spaceship…

Inevitably Dan is rescued and it becomes clear that he’s going to travel with the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) for a while, along with Yas (Mandip Gill). He’s a good addition to the team, quick to grasp what is needed, and full of courage as well as having a sense of humour.

Another thread I liked involved two new characters: Vinder (Jacob Anderson) who is in a spacecraft travelling the galaxy alone and making reports, and Bel (Thaddea Graham) who is a talented warrier and navigator. The two are romantically involved but have somehow lost each other, and are both on a quest to reunite. 

There are also quite complex time-travel threads with a woman called Clare (Annabel Scholey) who reappears in different eras, and a professor (Kevin McNally) who finds everything delightfully interesting despite increasing danger. And there’s an interesting connection with real-life history, with Joseph Williamson (Steve Oram) who built tunnels under Liverpool in the nineteenth century. 

Another foray into real history happens in the second episode of the series, and involves Mary Seacole and the Crimean War… except that it’s a war against an entirely different race from that which we have learned about. Sara Powell is wonderful and entirely believable as the courageous Seacole who was a pioneer in medicine around the same time as Florence Nightingale. 

Meanwhile the Doctor has lost some of her memories, and is fighting against not just the familiar enemies but the chilling ‘Ravagers’ who seek to destroy everything. There’s a lot of backstory about the Doctor in this series, and in the earlier ones too, which hasn’t happened so much with earlier incarnations of the Doctor. 

It’s a magnificent series, shorter than planned, apparently, as it was filmed during the pandemic. My husband didn’t seem to have any problem understanding what was going on, but I find fast action and loud noises confusing, and had to read summaries of the episodes after watching to figure out what I had missed. I’m still not sure I grasped more than the overview but with all the human interest stories, I looked forward to watching it each week, and am very glad I did.

We have the subsequent ‘special’ episode to watch over the next few weeks, and in the autumn plan to start over with Series One of the ‘new’ seasons, involving the Ninth Doctor, and re-watch everything again to see if it gradually becomes clearer. 

Definitely recommended if you like Doctor Who. 

Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews