Early on in director Sandra Nettelbeck’s drama, a knock at the door prevents Michael Caine’s suicide. It’s a pretty good gauge of a film’s tedium level when you’re cursing the interruption to the lead character’s demise. The cast deliver committed performances but, in a movie delivered at a snail’s pace, there’s way too much time to notice the devil in the details. Caine’s subtle portrayal of Matthew, a retired Harvard lecturer, grieving the death of his wife and estranged from his kids (Gillian Anderson and Justin Kirk), is constantly undermined. Not least by a dire American accent and a fat tummy cushion shoved up his shirt, in what looks like a botched attempt at portraying early pregnancy.
A script containing dramatic beats akin to bad daytime TV movies isn’t helped by Hans Zimmer’s score, reveling in “sad soundtrack” cliché. There’s some humour: when Matthew meets the far younger Pauline (Clémence Poésy), he tells her he taught philosophy. She replies she’s a teacher too – of cha-cha. However, the movie’s missing the glorious wit of say, Venus, in which Peter O’Toole excelled as a pensioner forming a dubious ‘friendship’ with a woman young enough to be his granddaughter.
Adapted from a French novel, I was left with the impression that this could have been a far better movie with a tighter script, a lighter touch, an accent coach, less stagey direction and 30 minutes snipped. It’s not terrible, but it is terribly slow. Paris is shot lovingly but, in the end, it’s the acting that lifts this otherwise plodding exercise in middle-class melancholy.
‘Mr. Morgan’s Last Love’ Movie Times
