The occupant is a feisty and precise 92-year-old woman named Mathilde Girard (Maggie Smith), who offers Mathias the opportunity to stay at the apartment she shares with her daughter, Chloe (Kristin Scott Thomas) until he gets his feet under him, for a price, of course. Mathias doesn't have a lot of options, so he begins looking for a way to sell the apartment, while also wrangling a bit of cash selling a few items from the top floor of the home, never visited by Madame Girard. As he roots around the old place, he begins to discover that everything is not quite as it seems.
Meanwhile, Chloe is desperate to keep the apartment and maintain the historic value since the billionaire seeking to purchase the once grand old estate merely wants to tear it down and build a huge hotel. While she and Mathias fight quite dirty-handedly over the property, both begin to discover things about their families that cause them to rethink their current situations and perhaps they can come to an understanding after all.
My Old Lady is quite bittersweet. It is the directorial debut of Israel Horovitz, who also wrote the screenplay, and it is beautifully shot and well acted, but it just wasn't exactly what I was expecting. While it had a few slight comedic moments, overall, the film was rather sad, whether it was Mathias' battle with depression, Chloe's inability to maintain a healthy romantic relationship, or even Mathilde's knowledge that Mathias is initially simply calculating when she might die. In the interview with Kline and Horovitz, he explains that the film was written as a love letter to Paris itself, with the relationships unfolding around her. I can see that. The film is not bad, by any means. It just wasn't as light-hearted and quirky as I had hoped. I also have to mention one more thing - there are no subtitles at all. This isn't a huge deal, but makes it impossible for anyone hard of hearing or deaf to view the film and enjoy it. Further, there's a good deal of French spoken in the film and these conversations weren't subtitled either, which is a bit odd. Some of them were rather pertinent and you basically got the meaning of what was being discussed from the facial expressions, but I thought it a bit ridiculous that the audience was left in the dark, lest they speak perfect French.
Overall, My Old Lady is a film with good acting, a well-written but melancholy script, and a beautiful setting, but not the most entertaining film. It is well crafted, but is not the type of film you pop in when you want to kick back and watch a flick. Maggie Smith, Kevin Kline and Kristin Scott Thomas are all fabulous actors and it is always a joy to watch them in their craft, I just didn't come away from this film loving it.
