Review: Our Souls at Night
There's a reason why Robert Redford and Jane Fonda are film legends. Yes, they're both talented and attractive but there's something else - an indefinable, ineffable quality that holds one's attention and never lets it go. That certain something suffuses the gentle and touching film adaptation of Kent Haruf's novel, Our Souls at Night.
It all begins with a relatively indecent proposal. One night, as Louis (Redford) sits alone in his house as he has done so many nights since his wife's death, he's visited by his similarly widowed neighbour Addie (Fonda). "Would you be interested in coming to my house sometime to sleep with me?" she asks. Louis is understandably taken aback, but it's companionship rather than sex that Addie seeks. The nights are the worst, she observes, and it might be helpful to have someone next to her to talk her through those long and lonely nights.
Louis knows of what she speaks - he needs help making it through the night himself - and, after briefly thinking it over, he shows up at her back door the next evening with a paper bag containing a change of clothes and toiletries. Though they have been neighbours for many years and she knew his wife, Louis realises that he doesn't really know Addie at all. Well, says Addie, let's get to know each other and get to know each other they do - Louis tells her of his extra-marital affair, Addie tells him of her guilt over her daughter's accidental death - and word starts getting around the small town that there's something going on between the two.
As the two become more relaxed with one another and with their relationship, a complication arises in the form of Addie's son Gene (Matthias Schoenaerts), who shows up one day to drop off his seven-year-old son Jamie (Iain Armitage) to stay with Addie whilst he sorts out his own marital problems. The family unit that Louis, Addie and Jamie form is soon shaken when Gene returns and vehemently disapproves of Louis, whom she shuts out at every turn.
Though the drama surrounding Gene makes a certain amount of sense, the tone of it feels at odds with the overall placidity of the film. Schoenaerts himself seems miscast, though there's a scene he shares with Fonda that, taken in and of itself, is so beautifully portrayed between the two actors. One keenly feels the lifetime of resentment that Gene carries and the burden of guilt that Addie has over not being able to ease him of his pain.
Yet it all is a distraction to the pleasure of watching Redford and Fonda play off one another. Louis and Addie are hardly the most challenging roles of their careers, but the manner in which both stars take their time, feeling their way through the emotions, listening to and looking at each other - everything is just immaculately done. There are probably no more heart-swelling moments in the film than Addie inching closer to Louis in the car as well as walking arm-in-arm down the street.
Our Souls at Night
Directed by: Ritesh Batra
Written by: Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber; based on the novel by Kent Haruf
Starring: Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Matthias Schoenaerts, Judy Greer, Bruce Dern, Iain Armitage, Phyllis Somerville
