Review: Grandma

Grandma may be a custom-made vehicle for the indomitable Lily Tomlin, but it is the effortlessly sexy and heartbreaking Sam Elliott who steals the show. If writer-director Paul Weitz, who previously cast Tomlin in a supporting role in his 2013 campus comedy Admission, was inspired to make Grandma as a means of spending quality time with Tomlin, then he - or any other filmmaker, for that matter - would be well-advised to craft such a showcase for the criminally underrated Elliott.

Tomlin and Elliott's scenes together are the undisputed heart and soul of Grandma, but they comprise but a small portion of this film, which combines a road movie with a family film with a grumpy old woman dramedy with a lesbian, feminist and abortion story. That's a lot to pack into an 80-minute film and, while Weitz manages to thread all these elements with varying degrees of success, he handles his material with a great deal of care, intelligence, and honesty.

Grandma begins with an ending - specifically Elle (Tomlin) and Olivia's (Judy Greer) break-up, but also the still-fresh traces of Violet's demise 18 months earlier. A once-celebrated poet (though Elle describes herself as "marginally well-known 40 years ago") now reduced to the academic beat, Elle is still mourning the loss of her 38-year partner Violet. Her four-month relationship with the much younger Olivia can't even begin to compare. "You're a footnote," she dismissively tells Olivia, who is understandably pained by this treatment.

The plot kicks in when, as Elle is sifting through her memories, her granddaughter Sage (a winsome Julia Garner) comes knocking on her door. She's pregnant, she shares with Elle, and she needs $630 to pay for an abortion that she's scheduled for later that same day. She has no money since her overbearing mother Judy (Marcia Gay Harden) confiscated her credit card, and there's no way she would even dare ask Judy for help. Elle doesn't have any cash on hand and credit cards are out of the question - after paying off all her debt, she cut them up into little pieces and turn them into a wind chime. "I'm transmogrifying my life into art," she declares to her stunned granddaughter.

Elle may not have the immediate means, but she has some other ideas on how to get the cash and so she and Julia drive around Los Angeles in Violet's vintage Dodge Royal in the hopes of raising the money. The all-day odyssey allows for some diverting detours - a dust-up in a gourmet coffee shop which was formerly a free women's clinic; an encounter with Sage's deadbeat boyfriend (Nat Wolff) that ends with him being hit by his own hockey stick; a hipster cafe where Elle predictably chafes at Olivia's unexpected presence; and a tattoo parlor run by an old friend Debbie (Laverne Cox).

For a time, Grandma meanders in and out of these random but narratively relevant interludes which, had Tomlin been absent, would have been revealed for their inherently trite nature. They do assume a cumulative power, but Grandma elevates to a completely different stratosphere upon the appearance of Elliott's Karl, a man who has accrued at least four ex-wives and countless kids and grandkids in the thirty years since he and Elle last set eyes upon one another. He has the cash they need, but Elle needs to navigate through a minefield of old hurts in her appeal for his assistance. Elliott has about ten minutes of screen time, but he unearths the fragility beneath the flint. It's one of his best performances, perhaps even the best of his career.

Grandma never quite recovers from their emotionally powerful reunion, but it does ably continue on its path in its exploration of three generations of womanhood and motherhood, and the choices that define their lives for good or ill. Elle "always liked women, I just didn't like myself" but her the consequences of her early confusion still reverberate in the present. Her daughter Judy, following her mother's independent lead, had Sage via an anonymous sperm donor. Now Sage must make her choice and live with it not just in the now, but in the years to come.

Grandma

Directed by: Paul Weitz

Written by: Paul Weitz

Starring: Lily Tomlin, Julia Garner, Marcia Gay Harden, Sam Elliott, Judy Greer, Laverne Cox, Elizabeth Peña, Nat Wolff, John Cho, Mo Aboul-Zelof, Lauren Tom, Carlos Miranda