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My Old Lady

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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

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.

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What are critics saying?

40

Village Voice by Abby Garnett

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.

50

Variety by Andrew Barker

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.

60

The Dissolve by Jen Chaney

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.

70

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.

40

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.

50

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.

60

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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