GRANDMA
DIRECTOR: Paul Weitz
CAST: Lily Tomlin, Julia Garner, Judy Greer, Marcia Gay Harden, Sam Elliott
CLASSIFICATION: 16 L
RUNNING TIME: 78 minutes
RATING: 4 stars (out of 5)
Ann Hornaday
Lily Tomlin – comedian, activist, and natural wonder – deftly balances a dazzling star turn and deeply felt character study in Grandma. Like its unassuming title, this small, closely-observed movie is deceptively modest in scope and tone.
Tomlin plays Elle Reid, a feminist poet and retired college professor whose comfortably secluded life is momentarily upended by a visit from her 18-year-old granddaughter, Sage (Julia Garner) who has discovered she’s pregnant, and has an appointment for a termination later that day.
But the girl’s mother recently confiscated her credit card. Sage needs $600 by the afternoon, and her grandmother is the only person she feels she can turn to.
Grandma follows the two women as they call on friends and acquaintances throughout Los Angeles, a classic journey made all the more schematic by the fact that they’re traveling in a vintage Dodge once owned by Elle’s late partner, Violet. Still mired in the spiky, angry slough of grief, Elle refuses to give Sage any cuddly reassurance in the face of her plight.
“It’s nothing to dance a jig about,” she snaps, when Sage seeks a comforting word. Later, when she takes her granddaughter to a free women’s health care clinic, only to discover it’s become an upscale cafe, she goes into a coffee-spilling tirade. “Where can you get a reasonably priced abortion these days?” she barks angrily.
Although reproductive choice is one theme of Grandma, this is not an abortion comedy in the tradition of Citizen Ruth or Obvious Child. Rather, in the sensitive hands of writer-director Paul Weitz, it becomes a wry, even melancholy meditation on ageing, self-knowledge and acceptance. There’s an amusing subtext having to do with the morphology of feminism over the past 40 years: When Elle tries to sell a first-edition Betty Friedan book at a women’s bookstore, Sage thinks The Feminine Mystique is a character from The X-Men. But the clue to the movie’s core meaning can be found in its very first scene, when Elle is breaking up with her much younger girlfriend Olivia (Judy Greer).
After an impressively literary shouting match (“Solipsist!” “Writer-in-residence!”), Elle confesses, “Yeah, well, I’m a horrible person.” It’s a sarcastic remark, but a telling one, that is explained in a scene when Elle visits a mysterious man from her past named Karl, played with laconic soulfulness by Sam Elliott.
Up until this point, Grandma has been a funny, somewhat bittersweet tour through Elle’s anger and prickly resignation. But when Tomlin and Elliott talk over a shared joint, Grandma takes on unexpected emotional depth and force. As definitive scenes go, it’s right up there with the greats: a delicate, finally devastating two-hander that holds its own as a one-act play or short film, with a lifetime of regret culminating in a moment of heartbreak and contained fury.
Marcia Gay Harden delivers an assured and nuanced a performance as Sage’s mother and Elle’s daughter, Judy. As well-served as she is by her supporting players, though, there’s no question that Tomlin owns Grandma, as she was meant to. Weitz wrote it for her after she appeared in his 2013 dramedy Admission. Like all of her greatest creations, Tomlin brings Elle to life with compassion and candid, withering knowingness.
Weitz begins his movie with an epigram from the poet Eileen Myles: “Time passes/ That’s for sure.” Tomlin embodies that difficult, damnable truth with a sharp tongue and sharper elbows that only she could pull off and still be unquestionably lovable. Weitz has done Tomlin, her fans and the viewing public an enormous service, reminding us all that the woman we’ve come to think of fondly as Ernestine and Edith Anne is also the superbly expressive actress of Nashville, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe and, from now on, Grandma. – The Washington Post
If you liked In Her Shoes or Little Miss Sunshine, you will like this.