My Old Lady

Mathias Gold (Kevin Kline) is a down-on-his-luck New Yorker who inherits a Parisian apartment from his estranged father. But when he arrives in France to sell the vast domicile, he's shocked to discover a live-in tenant who is not prepared to budge. His apartment is a viager - an ancient French real estate system with complex rules pertaining to its resale - and the feisty Englishwoman Mathilde Girard (Maggie Smith), who has lived in the apartment with her daughter Chloé (Kristin Scott Thomas) for many years, can by contract collect monthly payments from Mathias until her death. “That would be the beginning of a comedy, except that “My Old Lady” is not one, but rather a family drama at second glance. The American playwright Israel Horovitz wrote the play and thus, at the age of 75, made a late cinema debut without the mannerisms that theater people tend to use when they can finally play around with the camera. He relies on his three great leads - Kline, Smith and Kristin Scott-Thomas, who plays Mathilde's feisty daughter. [...] Now usually, in the movies, on stage and in real life, it comes down to deeply regretting people who were married to one and loved the other. The special thing about this play is that Horovitz doesn't do that - he manages to tell this story without moralizing. And yet you can sense what that means: regardless of losses.” (Susan Vahabzadeh, at sueddeutsche.de)