'My Old Lady' is smoothly directed and rings true emotionally
Israel Horowitz, age 75, has made his directorial debut with 鈥淢y Old聽Lady,鈥� adapting his 2002 play about a beaten-down, thrice-divorced 60-ish New Yorker, Mathias Gold (Kevin Kline), who inherits a Parisian聽apartment from his estranged father. To his dismay, the place is聽occupied by a tenant, a 92-year-old Englishwoman, Mathilde聽(Maggie Smith) and her daughter, Chloe (Kristin Scott Thomas). Because聽of a complex French real estate system called聽viager, she can聽resist eviction and collect monthly payments from Mathias until her death.
Horowitz does a smooth job of keeping the action focused without聽seeming stagebound 鈥� bringing the streets and lights of Paris into the聽picture certainly helps 鈥� and the performers make the best of their best聽lines. Smith is not playing the usual 鈥淢aggie Smith鈥� role; she鈥檚 softer,聽not quite as imperiously forbidding as usual. The material veers a bit too聽predictably from near farce to serioso dramatics but the trajectory here聽makes emotional sense. Grade:聽B (Rated PG-13 for thematic material and some sexual references.)
