Quartet

75 year-old Dustin Hoffman’s directorial début is a modestly charming story set in a retirement home for English musicians and singers--based on the Casa di Riposo per Musicisti founded by Giuseppe Verdi. The setting is the best aspect of the film, especially because Hoffman has populated the cast with actual retired performers in all of the supporting roles and extra parts. The story centers on a quartet of opera singers who are reunited when the last of their group, played by Maggie Smith, comes to live at the home. This causes much stress and heartache for her former husband, played by Tom Courtenay, but presents a golden opportunity for the in-house director of the annual fundraising gala, played by Michael Gambon. The reuniting of the quartet will be a sure fire way to sell tickets if only Maggie Smith’s character, who has given up singing, can be convinced to perform. The supporting leads/comic-relief, played by Billy Connolly and Pauline Collins, make this four-hander easy to watch.

Unfortunately Ronald Harwood's screenplay (based on his play) is not an intricate symphony of structure, leitmotifs, and subtext--it’s more like the practice pieces little kids play when learning music via the Suzuki method. Simple conflicts are set up and then simple resolutions immediately follow, then another minor conflict arises and its just as easily resolved. These story beats click back and forth like a metronome keeping time until the inevitable climax and conclusion. Still, one has to be grateful to the film for not pandering to the audience or being one of those frothy, silly BBC comedies about the elderly. It also has the decency to focus on one story, unlike this year’s convoluted and overstuffed elderly-English-movie-star-ensemble-piece The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Quartet is a simple but honest film about the last years of life.