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GRANDMA Send This Review to a Friend
Many will want to see “Grandma” for the colorful, poignant and feisty dramatic performance by Lily Tomlin in the title role. That would be reason enough. But “Grandma,” written and directed by Paul Weitz, offers so much more. For one thing it is about lesbian relationships—no groundbreaker there—but it is also an exceptionally candid film about abortion. I kept expecting the film to cop out, but it is very true to its subject, and that gives the film honesty and depth.
Tomlin, in a memorably serious acting turn, plays Elle, a lesbian whom we meet when she is nastily breaking up with her younger mate Olivia, a lovely Judy Greer. Behind Elle’s bluster is sadness. She has been mourning the death of her long time previous partner, is crotchety, inwardly dissatisfied with herself and dispenses words like daggers. Elle has been a poet and professor, but hasn’t done much lately in the mess that her life has become.
When she was still having relations with men Elle had a daughter, Judy, who is played by the excellent Marcia Gay Harden, but they have long been estranged. We learn that Judy was raised in a two-mother household.
Elle is surprised to have turning up at her home her granddaughter Sage, who has been having her own troubles with her mother, Judy. Sage, given a sensitive, smartly understated and intriguing portrayal by Julia Garner, is pregnant, but fearful of going to her mother. Instead, she seeks help from her grandmother. She urgently needs money for an abortion that she has scheduled for late that afternoon.
Elle is appalled at the idea of Sage getting into such a situation, as her granddaughter seems clueless about life, but Elle is sympathetic to her crisis. However, Elle is broke, having destroyed her credit cards, but she sets off with Sage in her run-down car on an expedition to raise the money and get Sage to the clinic in time for the appointment. There are clashes between them too, but we see an underlying affection surfacing.
One stop is to see the loser boyfriend (Nat Wolff) who made Sage pregnant and refuses to take any responsibility. He won’t cough up any money, but by the time the encounter is over, he’ll wish that he has never sassed Grandma.
Another stop is at an old lover of Elle’s who is a tattoo artist, and there is also an encounter with Karl, extremely well-played by Sam Elliott, who remains bitter over the relationship he had a lifetime ago with Elle. Ultimately, after failure to raise enough money, there must be the inevitable, painful trip to Judy for assistance. Will there be any better mother-daughter relationship for both generations? And what about Elle’s Life?
The money problem is a bit of a stretch in the screenplay, but it serves as the vehicle for a journey that reveals much about the characters as well as lives led. One experiences during the course of the day depicted a sense of reality that we don’t often get to that degree in home-grown films. In the midst of current escalated anti-abortion maneuvers in legislatures and courts, Weitz has come up with a film courageous in its candor. And to boot we have Lily Tomlin demonstrating anew how multi-talented she is. A Sony Pictures Classics release. Reviewed August 22, 2015.
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