Grand­ma

Grand­ma is an easy movie to like, run­ning a fleet 79 min­utes and pro­vid­ing a well-deserved show­case for Lily Tom­lin. Yet despite its han­dling of poten­tial­ly con­tro­ver­sial mate­r­i­al, it doesn’t leave much of an impres­sion. The plot is sim­ple: a jour­ney from point A to point B with quirky stops along the way. Elle Reid (Tom­lin) is the grand­ma, a brusque les­bian poet who doesn’t suf­fer fools glad­ly, and whose grand­daugh­ter, Sage (Julia Gar­ner), comes to her for help when she finds her­self unex­pect­ed­ly preg­nant with­out the mon­ey to get an abortion.

Abor­tion is a touchy sub­ject, and this film deserves cred­it for han­dling it mat­ter of fact­ly and not hav­ing Sage doubt her deci­sion. Over­all, it’s tonal­ly sim­i­lar to last year’s Obvi­ous Child, while avoid­ing that film’s lapse into cliché́ rom-com ter­ri­to­ry. Grandma’s focus is on the rela­tion­ship between Elle and Sage – Sage’s boyfriend is a buf­foon­ish bro who clear­ly doesn’t deserve her. Sage, with her blonde curls and fine bone struc­ture, has an angel­ic qual­i­ty that stands in con­trast to Elle’s tough pres­ence, and the ten­sion between the two of them pro­vides affec­tion­ate laughs.

At times, though, Elle feels too much like a Man­ic Pix­ie Dream Grand­ma. Con­sid­er ear­ly in the film, when we see that she has cut up her cred­it cards and hung them in a mobile, a means of ​“trans­mo­gri­fy­ing” her life into art. If only she hadn’t act­ed out in such a quirky way, it would’ve been so much eas­i­er to help Sage. With lit­tle mon­ey and no cred­it cards, they have to vis­it a vari­ety of Elle’s friends in order to get the $600 they need for the pro­ce­dure. There is also the moment before walk­ing into the abor­tion clin­ic when a young girl protest­ing out­side punch­es Elle. Being punched by a child feels like some kind of cutesy appro­pri­a­tion of broad com­e­dy, and it doesn’t work.

The film also makes use of inter­ti­tles for each chap­ter of their jour­ney – a device that serves most­ly to call atten­tion to details that we would notice any­way. Elle is a poet, and per­haps the inter­ti­tles are a way of giv­ing the film a poet­ic feel, but it seems too self-con­scious a device, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the director’s first film was Amer­i­can Pie. Poet­ic devices or not, Grand­ma is unques­tion­ably the more sub­tle film. In one of the strongest sequences, Elle and Sage vis­it Karl (Sam Elliott), Elle’s for­mer fling.

In a rel­a­tive­ly short scene, Tom­lin and Elliott estab­lish a believ­able con­nec­tion – Elliott’s drawl adds instant grav­i­ty to the pro­ceed­ings, and as the two stand close to one anther, and Elle scans the house, look­ing at pic­tures of his chil­dren, a believ­able por­trait of a past rela­tion­ship is paint­ed. Karl ends up refus­ing to give the mon­ey on moral grounds, but the detour is nev­er­the­less valu­able, func­tion­ing as a play in miniature.

It’s not often we see a film that por­trays a 75 year old as mul­ti­fac­eted, and gives her zingers (the way Tom­lin deliv­ers the line, ​“She’s already preg­nant!” when a guy looks at her grand­daugh­ter is one of the film’s best moments), so Grand­ma is refresh­ing in that record. While it is hin­dered by a num­ber of pre­cious indie trap­pings, it man­ages to be an over­all poignant film, with two mem­o­rable per­for­mances at its core.