I’ll See You In My Dreams

You might think to heap scorn at movies that appear like they’re not real­ly try­ing: they don’t strain too hard for insight or orig­i­nal­i­ty; don’t attempt to undu­ly ramp up the on-screen ener­gy lev­els; or even employ a script to artic­u­late some kind of basic pro­fun­di­ty. I’ll See You In My Dreams from direc­tor Brett Haley is guilty on all those counts, and yet a delec­table sparkle remains in its atti­tude of unguard­ed insouciance.

Blythe Dan­ner – an actress who doesn’t get all that many lead-role run-outs – achieves every­thing by doing noth­ing as chilled-out wid­ow Car­ol Petersen. She has decid­ed to get back into the dat­ing game after sev­er­al years sat­ing her social enter­tain­ment require­ments by hang­ing out with a trio of age­ing girl­friends. A sym­bol­ic black rodent takes up refuge in her house, and this is the kick she needs to suc­cumb to the odd speed-dat­ing ses­sion, a trip down the karaōke bar with a gawky/​cute pool clean­er, and even bat her eye­lids in the direc­tion of dash­ing OAP mys­tery man, Bill, played by the inim­itable Sam Elliott.

The unshowy, unsen­ti­men­tal script only gives the actors a cer­tain amount to do and say, and so the onus is on them to pick up the slack. And while this method gets the best out of all the per­form­ers, first and fore­most it serves as a show­case for Dan­ner who trades in a very nice line in dead­pan bemuse­ment and quizzi­cal glares.

Though the gen­er­al tone is bit­ter­sweet and affir­ma­tive, the film doesn’t just exist to endorse the idea of old­er peo­ple being active and pre­tend­ing to be young. Its chief plea­sure is that it real­ly gets at how dif­fi­cult it is to cast your anx­i­eties aside and embrace care­free fun once more. Its small, minute­ly focused sto­ry takes in a wealth of con­sid­er­a­tions with­out address­ing them in too clunki­ly direct a man­ner. It’s a very sweet film.