Quartet

Film (2012)

With Maggie Smith (Jean Horton), Tom Courtenay (Reginald Paget), Billy Connolly (Wilf Bond), Pauline Collins (Cissy Robson), Michael Gambon (Cedric Livingston), Sheridan Smith (Dr. Lucy Cogan)

This first directorial outing by the acclaimed American actor Dustin Hoffman is set in an old age home for musicians in England. All of the principal actors are renowned Britishers, including Tom Courtenay and Maggie Smith playing central roles.

Mostly, the film is an opportunity to show off the brilliant acting skills of the principals while pursuing a plot that focuses on whether a certain retired vocalist will return to do another performance and whether a formerly married couple will be able to reconcile.

There is not much plot, but that does not seem to matter here. Hoffman has worked wonderfully well with his adept actors to create an ongoing sense of emotional development in the midst of an eldercare melee.

Tom Courtenay (Reginald Paget) really stands out in this piece. The stoic disposition with which he approaches many of his film roles, notably in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) and The Dresser (1983), works very well here. It takes only a brief glance to grasp the brooding intensity he so well conveys.

Maggie Smith (Jean Horton) is always great to watch, and here gives a tender and vulnerable performance, quite different from the pointed and witty role, as Lady Grantham, she has made famous on the soapy but loveable British highbrow TV drama, Downton Abbey, over the past few years.

Billy Connolly (Wilf Bond) does a rollicking good job here as a dandyish rogue with a heart of gold. He had played, notably, John Brown in the film Mrs. Brown (1997) opposite Judi Dench as Queen Victoria. Here he provides a wonderful, light, comedic presence.

Pauline Collins (Cissy Robson), also makes a bouncy and charming contribution, and holds down, as well, the intermittent senile dementia corner. I fondly remember her work in the long-running 1970s British TV serial Upstairs, Downstairs, as Sarah, the young and roguish Cockney maid.

Other luminaries, like Michael Gambon (Cedric Livingston), show up at random in this festival of the talented and superannuated.

Though lost and rediscovered romance governs the plot, there is much here that just involves enjoying hearing the music and observing the scene, and Hoffman and his deft crew pull off that combination very well.

– BADMan