By Patricia Reaney
By the time Oscar-winning actor Kevin Kline began filming the comedic drama My Old Lady, he was very familiar with the role of the down-and-out, divorced New Yorker, who inherits a rambling apartment in Paris with a few surprises and secrets.
Kline, 66, plays Mathias Gold, an embittered, unpublished writer and recovering alcoholic nearing 60 with little to show for his life, in the film that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and opens in theaters shortly.
Years before he had been offered the part in the French stage version of Israel Horovitz’s three-character play of the same name. And when the prolific playwright decided to adapt it for his directorial screen debut, Horovitz turned to Kline to read it as he honed the script.
“He is at the end of his tether but there is still some shred of a possibility that he can get his life together,” Kline, who nabbed an Academy Award for the comedy A Fish Called Wanda, said about the character.
The story follows Gold, who thinks his financial problems will be solved when he inherits the Parisian garden apartment following his estranged father’s death. But when he arrives to stake his claim, he discovers it is inhabited by the elderly, quick-witted Mathilde Girard, played by dual Oscar winner Maggie Smith (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and California Suite).
She sold it to Gold’s father years before under the French viager system, in which the buyer pays a lump sum and monthly payments for life to the seller, who can live in it until death.
While the penniless Gold sorts himself out Girard lets him stay in a spare room, much to the dismay of her daughter, Chloe, played by Kristen Scott Thomas (The English Patient.)
The film is a reunion for Kline and Scott Thomas, 54, who worked together in 2001’s Life as a House, but pits Kline against the formidable Smith, 79, for the first time in their long careers. “It was a dream to watch her work, to see how she worked,” said Kline, who admitted forcing her to tell him endless theatre stories.
“She worked with all the greats during the heyday of British theatre,” Kline, a two-time Tony award winner, said.
My Old Lady, which was filmed in Paris, is filled with plot twists, turns and surprises as the characters discover more about themselves and each other.
“He is like most of us,” Kline said about Gold. “He is labouring under some misapprehensions about who he is, what life means, why he is the victim of his genetic and environmental past.”
The trade magazine Variety praised the actors for their fine performances but described the film as a “clunky Ibsen-lite drama.”
“The author of more than 70 plays, the 75-year-old Horovitz exhibits a tasteful stateliness in his maiden voyage behind the camera, latching onto an agreeable rhythm that nonetheless lacks much of a spark,” Variety said. – Reuters
Brook’s former beau to sue her?
Actress-model Kelly Brook may face legal action for telling all about her relationship with rugby player Danny Cipriani in her new memoir Close Up. But she has no regrets. Brook is not apologetic about spilling the beans about any of her secrets about any of her former boyfriends, reports contactmusic.com.
“Danny Cipriani is blowing up my phone now, saying, ‘I’m going to sue you’. I’m like, ‘Go ahead’. They take out injunctions, these Premiership players, so I thought he might do that if I showed him (the memoir in advance). I thought I’d get my voice out there first and then go to jail,” Brook told a radio channel. “Everyone in there is pretty fair game to be honest. They knew I was doing a book and they asked me to send it to them, so I said, ‘Yeah, yeah’ and then I forgot,” she added. The duo had on and off relationship for five years before calling it quits amid cheating rumours in 2013. — IANS
Jessica Alba regrets
not going to college
Actress Jessica Alba says she felt “kind of insecure” for not going to college and finishing her education.
The Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For actress admits her insecurity on The Meredith Vieira Show, reports femalefirst.co.uk.
“I was always insecure about not going to college and I always felt I wasn’t smart enough. My teens and my 20s, I just wasn’t sure of myself and I was always kind of insecure, and I always felt I needed to apologise for myself,” she said. The brunette beauty, who is now 33, credits her family for helping her to become more confident. — IANS
