The Fundy Film Society

Grandma

Comedy legend Lily Tomlin (I Heart Huckabees) shines in this spirited and touching film from director Paul Weitz (About a Boy), a sharply observed comedy-drama about intergenerational relationships and how our past is never really left behind.

Tomlin stars as aging poet and quick-witted grump Elle, who as the film opens has just ended her relationship with a much younger woman (Judy Greer, The Descendants). Still mourning the death of her long-time partner, Elle is also struggling to make ends meet as interest in her poetry diminishes and aca-demic jobs are few and far between. In the midst of her own troubles, Elle receives a surprise visit from her teenage granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner, Martha Marcy May Marlene), who is pregnant and in dire need of cash for her doctor’s appointment later that same day. Elle is unable to loan Sage the money, and both are unwilling to ask Sage’s uptight and out-of-touch mother (Marcia Gay Harden, Magic in the Moonlight), so the pair set out in Elle’s vintage (i.e. ancient) car to try and cobble together the cash from Elle’s old friends and old flames (one of whom is played by the always wonderful Sam Elliott (I’ll See You in My Dreams, Up in the Air). As this odd couple faces a number of obstacles in the course of their journey and Sage begins to learn about her grandmother’s complex past, the two women are able to achieve a new honesty in their relationship, and begin to chart a way forward together.

It is no surprise that Tomlin is ideal as Elle, both due to her masterful comic timing and her ability to reveal depths of vulnerability and emotion beneath a brittle exterior. Mixing laughter and tears to marvellous effect, Grandma addresses such subjects as loss, love and motherhood with both wry humour and refreshing honesty.

“On the surface, Grandma is a simple story, but the script imbues it with deep reserves of emotional depth and meaning that are slowly, organically revealed over the course of the plot.” (Katie Walsh, The Playlist)

“Though likely to be variously praised and pilloried as a pro-choice film, Weitz’s film is really a movie about choice in both the specific and the abstract—about the choices we make, for good and for ill, and how we come to feel about them through the prism of time.” (Scott Foundas, Variety)