You have to give Elle Reid credit. She’s lived her life on her terms and made no apologies about it. However, now that she’s pushing 70 and her much-younger girlfriend has broken up with her, Elle’s starting to realize that there’s a cost for going your own way. To be sure, being part of the status quo requires a great deal of personal compromise and the cost of having your soul slowly die, day-by-day, is incalculable. So there’s something a bit noble in the way Elle’s eschewed a 9-to-5 job and followed the beat of her own drummer. But society doesn’t like what it doesn’t understand and there’s a price to paid for living out loud and being brutally honest with anyone who crosses your path, and that day of reckoning arrives for Elle at the most inopportune of times.
Paul Weitz’s “Grandma” is a physically modest film but one of grand emotional scope. Propelled by Lily Tomlin’s powerhouse performance as Elle, the movie is refreshingly honest in the way it deals with familial injuries that fester, relationships that are strained to the breaking point and damage that can never truly heal. Credit Weitz and his strong cast for rendering this material in a sincere manner, never once taking a maudlin approach or opting for a feel-good solution.
For a full review, go to: http://www.news-gazette.com/arts-entertainment/local/2015-09-24/chuck-koplinski-grandma-excels.html
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