The Holdovers review – the most scintillating festive movie in years

A curmudgeonly teacher, a grieving cook and a petulant young student find themselves thrown together for the holidays in Alexander Payne's excellent Christmassy dramedy.

For the last decade, it seemed that Alexander Payne had lost his touch. After the critical success of Nebraska in 2013, the American director fell short with 2017’s Downsizing, a messy film featuring a thumb-sized Matt Damon unrecognisable from Payne’s early comedic masterpieces. His highpoint came with the effervescent Sideways from 2004, a gentle and delicious comedy about a wine-soaked road trip.

The essential ingredient for that film was Paul Giamatti, who takes on his first leading role in years as classics professor Paul Hunham for Payne’s The Holdovers. The director and actor work together like port and Stilton at the end of a college feast, blending with ease into the film’s 1970s 35mm aesthetic, courtesy of cinematographer Eigil Bryld. There’s the sense of homecoming after an arduous winter term. Rather feeling indulgently nostalgic, it is easy to forget that the film was made in the 21st century.

Hunham is a curmudgeonly old sod, adorned with fusty corduroy and a roving glass eye. He berates his pupils as Philistines for not knowing their Tacitus from their Marcus Aurelius, and rejects the warmth of a Christmas cookie from the colleagues he distrusts. He is no beloved Mr. Chips or inspirational John Keating, maintaining a more Henry Higgins-like reluctance to be liked. This persists into the Christmas holidays, when he is tasked with supervising students who cannot go home for one reason or another – the ‘holdovers’ of the title.

Payne combines his wholesome Hal Ashby textures with the schoolboyish charms of Wes Anderson’s Rushmore – although his student protagonist, Angus Tully, is much savvier than Max Fischer. The majority of The Holdovers is played between Hunham and Tully, a remarkable debut performance from Dominic Sessa, who patter through writer David Hemingson’s endlessly witty repartee with flair. Their exchanges recall the charms of Woody Allen’s autumnal masterpieces, played out over roast dinners and cosy jazz-scored soirées.

There is a warmth to being in the cinematic presence of this twosome that melts away the frosty world outside. Payne’s pitch-perfect pacing allows both Hunham and Tully to soften before our eyes, crafting a hilarious and moving teacher-student relationship. But it is never saccharine, or insufferably insular in its boarding school setting. Da’Vine Joy Randolph makes sure of that as the cook Mary Lamb who serves as our in, and our out, from this cushy space of privileged learning. Her son was a pupil at the school as a perk of her employment, and while his peers went on to become lawyers and academics, he was killed in Vietnam. Randolph delicately balances the character’s grief and humour, always at hand to call out the men and to add poignancy to Hemingson’s script.

The trio’s company is so embracing that it is hard to say goodbye. The benefit of the Yuletide setting is that Payne has gifted us a film intended to be watched every year. It feels like finding an unwatched classic under the tree on Christmas morning.

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Published 16 Jan 2024

Tags: Alexander Payne The Holdovers