I'll See You in My Dreams (2015)

Film: I'll See You in My Dreams (2015)
Stars: Blythe Danner, Martin Starr, Sam Elliott, Malin Akerman, June Squibb, Rhea Perlman, Mary Kay Place
Director: Brett Haley
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Formula movies drive me batty as a general rule.  Genres like musicals, romantic comedies, melodramas, westerns-these are genres that are so repetitive that eventually the public's taste in them subsided, to the point where they appear niche or one-off in a year when they used to dominate the landscape.  This is particularly daunting when you have so much great ground in these topics still, particularly as they relate to our modern lives, and all it would take is a slight twisting, a spattering of actors that you don't normally see together, and bing bang boom, you have yourself a great little movie.  Thankfully Brett Haley does just that with the deceptively simple I'll See You in My Dreams, a beautiful little gem of a movie that feels like something that will make you ball your eyes out on a rainy Sunday during a Lifetime marathon, but instead is something so much deeper, and is grounded by a brilliant piece of work for Blythe Danner.  It is a romantic dramedy (it's too dramatic to be a straight comedy), but it's adult, sophisticated, thoughtful, and thoroughly worth the ticket price.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Carol (Danner), a longtime widow who used to be a singer and a teacher, but now resides in her plush California home, filling her days with card games with friends and bonding with her dog and dry-cleaning (anyone else catch how frequently dry-cleaning was on the dry erase board in her kitchen?).  After she has to put her longtime dog down, she starts to feel restless, eventually becoming friends with her pool-guy Lloyd (Starr), and getting back into the dating game with the exceedingly charming Bill (Elliot).  Throughout, she starts to question her life, and the weird moments in it that sort of define her, and the lack of purpose she feels as she gets older.  As the film progresses, she must encounter that life has a way of being exceedingly cruel (Bill dies just as she starts to fall for him), but realizes that she must push on, continuing her unlikely friendship with Lloyd, spending more time with her daughter, and adopting a new dog.

The film's best attributes, at least plot-wise, are the ways that it addresses issues of isolation and age in a way that doesn't feel cloying or inauthentic.  Carol is someone that we all sort of aspire to be-she has comfort, good friends, and had a rewarding career as a musician and teacher.  She's the sort of person who walks down the street and we say, "I want to be her when I get to that age," but she still has regrets and wonders about what her life could have been had her husband not died so young or if she'd pursued one of her careers with a more fervent passion.  There's a beautiful moment late in the film with her daughter where she has lost so much, and what is there left to live for, and her daughter (played by Malin Akerman, in a fine supporting turn) tells her she needs to focus on what she has and not what she had, because the latter's not a way to live.  It's a wonderful moment to watch both as I get older, but more so as I see friends and family that have entered that era of Carol's life, where pieces and people they expected to be in their old age have slipped away, and it's either a question of adjusting to a new reality or wallowing, wasting away years at a time and realizing that more of your life you spent taking a knee than you should have.  Films rarely focus on how long old age and retirement can be, as they usually have older people just there for us to see die, but Danner's Carol could well have another twenty years left, and she realizes this at the end of the film in a way that doesn't feel like a change in character, but just in attitude.

That's a tough thing to pull off, and thankfully Danner knows how to do it.  She knows that at 72, she's still exquisitely beautiful and charming, and knows the effect that she still has on those around her.  I love the way that her friendship with Lloyd never quite gets her cards shown, even if he seems to have romantic feelings for her in a move obvious way.  She's been practiced at holding men at a distance since her husband's death, and you see that sort of deliberation and practice in all of her work.  People who have been single for the bulk of their lives follow routines, patterns, and they dislike the disruptions, and I loved that Danner took the time to put that into her work.  The rest of the cast was strong with the exception of Squibb/Perlman/Place (the three women who play her friends as comic relief feel jarringly one-dimensional compared to the lovely things that the rest of the cast is piecing together, though they all have strong enough comic timing to never stop the film from being watchable), and even small characters like Reid Scott's police officer feel warmly blended into the movie.

All-in-all, while it was marketed like it's from a different era of cinema-going (that poster SCREAMS 1980's), it's still something very relevant and personal, and something you should check out if you haven't already.  If you have, share your thoughts below.  If you haven't, at least share a favorite memory of Blythe Danner!