Wednesday 15 August 2018

Our Souls at Night (2017 Ritesh Batra)

Neustadter and Weber are the adaptation kings - this one is from Kent Haruf, who completed the book just before his death in 2014. It's another quiet film with Redford being propositioned by Fonda to spend nights together to alleviate loneliness, joined by a repressed boy Iain Armitage (and a collie) and his conflicted father Matthias Schoenaerts. Judy Greer and Bruce Dern appear fleetingly, and Phyllis Somerville (Fonda's friend) is recognisable to us from such things as Little Children, The Double, Restless and Bringing Out the Dead. It's an unfussy, clear-footed film, Batra being the director (and co-writer) of The Lunchbox.

There've been more Fonda-Redford pairings than I thought - The Chase (1966), The Electric Horseman (1979) and Barefoot in the Park (1967)... and you'd have to include (obscure pub quiz question) 1960's Tall Story in which Redford is an unbilled basketball player (Fonda's debut).

Shot by Stephen Goldblatt, aged 73. A Netflix film.



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