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United Kingdom, France, United States · 2014
Rated PG-13 · 1h 47m
Director Israel Horovitz
Starring Maggie Smith, Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott Thomas, Dominique Pinon
Genre Comedy, Drama, Romance
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In this drama, struggling New Yorker Mathias travels to Paris to sell the apartment his father has left him. However, when he arrives, he finds out that Mathilde, the old woman who sold the apartment to Mathias' father, has the legal right to occupy it until her death, along with her daughter Chloe.
It sounds like a recipe for comedy (and Kline seems to think so too, waltzing and prat-falling through Mathias's alcoholic foibles), but Horovitz's screenplay guns instead for an emotionally and financially tangled melodrama, and ends up feeling aggravatingly inconsistent.
Its translation from stage to screen looks to have been a bit rocky, and the film never manages to transcend its actors-workshop aura and develop into something deeper.
Slant Magazine by Elise Nakhnikian
Israel Horovitz's film is basically a three-character play without a single character you can believe in.
My Old Lady is pretty compelling viewing, mostly thanks to Kline, who gives a career-high performance here.
My Old Lady isn’t the tart slice of dessert that its initial scenes suggest it might be. In fact, it only becomes truly compelling in its second half, as Horovitz drives toward darker material and farther away from the light.
The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore
Kline remains a pleasure to watch, surviving the character's deepening self-pity and making his suspiciously unwriterly carelessness with words (he refers to the trophy head of a wild boar as a "cow") almost charming.
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
Awkwardly balanced between comedy and significance, with plotting that gets increasingly schematic and unconvincing, My Old Lady is bound and determined to get more serious than it is capable of sustaining.
The Playlist by Kevin Jagernauth
Though Horovitz's directing is workmanlike solid, and while the movie has a certain charm that makes it easy to walk in the door, it gives you little reason to stay.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service by Roger Moore
The venerable acting firm of Smith-Kline & Scott Thomas make certain that this Paris trip is anything but a waste.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
As the truth tumbles out, the dialogue and the carefully timed revelations make My Old Lady seem increasingly stagy. But the performances go a long way toward camouflaging the screenplay’s clunky mechanics.
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