Clocking in at less than 80 minutes, Grandma is a model of how to efficiently arrange a gamut of provocative, meaningful ideas within a single film without a moment wasted by the poor pacing that has become normal in Hollywood as well as indie films. Grandma quickly assumes the form of that most ancient of stories, the odyssey, when Elle (Lily Tomlin) sets forth with teenage granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) to find $630 to pay for an abortion.
Elle’s curmudgeonly character is sharply inscribed in Grandma’s opening scene, breaking up with her girlfriend, the decades-younger Olivia (Judy Greer). “Stick with the narrative,” Elle demands, falling into the rhetoric of her lapsed academic career. She adds that in contrast to her preceding 38 years with the same partner, Olivia is merely “a footnote.” The young woman holds back tears as she is told to leave the keys on the table and go. Then, Elle steps into the shower and cries as jets of warm water cover her own tears.
With Elle established as an unsentimental force of nature, at least as she presents to the world, Sage sheepishly appears at her doorstep. The teenager can’t pay for the end-of-day appointment to end her unexpected, unwanted pregnancy. The emotional significance isn’t minimized. “This is something you will think about every day for the rest of your life,” Elle says, sympathetically. But grandma doesn’t have any money and recently cut up her credit cards to make a mobile hanging from a garden tree branch. They go off in search of cash, responsibility, the bonds of family and communication between generations.
Suffice it to say, the father of Sage’s child is an arrogant little dick who refuses any accountability for his actions. Elle beats up the startled, unprepared boy with his own hockey stick and steals his money—and his stash of pot. She smokes some with her long-ago lover, Karl (Sam Elliot), a proud man unbent by age whose anger over the past eventually erupts like hot lava. Finally, they confront Elle’s daughter and Sage’s mother, Judy (Marcia Gay Harden), an unpleasant woman who chose to have a child but chose to pay considerably more attention to her career.
Grandma surveys several alternative lifestyles and essays the passage of time along with the incomprehension of Sage’s generation over the larger issues of society and politics. Is The Feminine Mystique a hip-hop album? As the feisty old woman whose temper is harder to handle than an unbroken mustang, Tomlin plays the role of a lifetime.
Opens Sept. 18 at the Oriental Theatre.
Grandma
3 and a half stars
Lily Tomlin
Judy Greer
Directed by Paul Weitz
Rated R
