Carol (Blythe Danner) has been a widow for 20 years and long retired from teaching but her bedside alarm still bleats at 6 a.m. each day.
The Southern California woman has her routine — coffee and a morning newspaper, lunch near her backyard pool, the occasional game of golf, evening bridge games with three female friends and enough wine to relax or embolden — and her sweet dog. When she has to put her ailing, 14-year-old pet golden retriever, Hazel, down, she finds herself at loose ends.
Starring: Blythe Danner, Sam Elliott, Martin Starr.
Rating: PG-13 for sexual material, drug use and brief strong language.
In “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” opening today at the Manor, she befriends Lloyd (Martin Starr) her pool cleaner, tries and is horrified by speed dating and meets a single man, Bill (Sam Elliott), who seems too good to be true. He’s handsome, charming, is a take-charge guy without being disagreeable, and owns a beautiful boat named “So What” after the Miles Davis composition.
Bill also has an interesting take on people who retire with all their money and then don’t know what to do with themselves. That chapter of life, along with the subjects of death, dating and how time speeds up, are among the ones batted around in the screenplay by director Brett Haley and Marc Basch.
“No matter what you do, it’s all going to just run together by the time you’re 50. Time just goes by quicker,” Carol tells Lloyd, who studied poetry in college and returned home to be with his widowed mother who’s been having some health problems.
Oddly enough, medical woes are not a regular topic of discussion for Carol and her pals played by June Squibb, Rhea Perlman and Mary Kay Place (for the record, Ms. Danner is 73 years old, Ms. Squibb is 85 and the other two, 67). They get one of those mature ladies-gone-slightly wild scenes that seems designed to inject some automatic laughs, and while it’s funny, it feels a little forced and false, especially for the most conservative of the quartet.
However, women of a certain age are an endangered species on the big screen and while Carol’s East Coast daughter (Malin Akerman) shows up, she doesn’t become the focus. “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” which takes its title from a Keegan DeWitt song, is a showcase for Ms. Danner, who even delivers a sultry version of a classic at a bar’s karaoke night. She brings a quiet dignity, widow’s mournfulness, banked romantic fires and a streak forged from independence, stubbornness and vulnerability to the role.
Carol’s relationship with Mr. Starr’s character (the now grown-up actor from “Freaks and Geeks” was in “Adventureland” and “Lifeguard” shot in Pittsburgh) stays sweet and heartfelt. Her female friends, alas, are sketched in broad terms.
As you might expect from a story set partially at a retirement community, death calls in a surprising, sudden way but so, too, does a renewed vigor for life. And that is a reminder that requires no senior citizen discount to savor.
Movie editor Barbara Vancheri: bvancheri@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1632. Read her blog: www.post-gazette.com/madaboutmovies.
First Published: June 12, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
