The Holdovers [2023]

 Narratives featuring two difficult individuals who overcome not just their borderline hostilities, but also gain rare insights into the other and thereby form an unlikely bond, upon being compelled to endure each other’s companies despite mutual differences and dislike, are as old as cinema itself, especially among its popular variants. Alexander Payne, who’s been adept at marrying Indie sensibilities with mainstream storytelling, made smart and captivating use of this otherwise hackneyed strand in The Holdovers; that it was also an outwardly bitter but essentially fuzzy and likeable Christmas movie, added to both its conventionality and charm. Set in an elite boarding school over the course of the winter holidays in 1970, it portrayed the growing camaraderie between an irascible and infuriating professor of the classics (Paul Giamatti) – derided and hated by all, which he reciprocates with undiluted scorn – and an intelligent but troubled teenaged student (Dominic Sessa), who’s been forced to stay back under the former’s guardianship, much to the chagrin of both. Giving them company is an African-American woman (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) who’s the school’s canteen manager and a bereaved mother, with her son having been killed in the Vietnam War. Payne could’ve interlaced striking commentaries on class and race into the film, and therefore taken it beyond just its aesthetic homage to the New American Cinema of the 1970s and instead pushed the cinematic boundaries like them; his thematic intent here, however, was steadfastly hinged around personal redemption. What prevented its devolution into just another conventional fare were Giamatti’s stellar turn as the lonely and caustic man, the script’s edgy tones that kept sentimentality in check, and the shared empathy that develops between the three social outsiders.

Director: Alexander Payne

Genre: Comedy/Drama/Road Movie/Buddy Film

Language: English

Country: US