Film Review - The Leisure Seeker (15)

We're just taking a little trip, Jane.

Now here's a film that's likely to be dismissed by younger cinema-goers as a retiree's road-movie, fuzzy and undemanding like the title suggests. But The Leisure Seeker, an adaptation of Michael Zadoorian's 2009 novel, is more than a whimsical piece of 'Silver Cinema'. Marketed as a sentimental comedy-drama, its take on life, love and mortality turns out to be memorably stark and unflinching. 

Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland are Ella and John Spencer, an ageing couple who take their battered old Winnebago - 'The Leisure Seeker' - on the road one more time. Setting out from Massachusetts, they head south with the Earnest Hemingway House in Florida Keys as their goal. Trouble is, retired college professor John is wrestling with dementia, while his wife/carer Ella harbours health issues of her own. Their adult children are frantic at the development, but Ella is on a mission. And it's about more than a tourist trip to her home of her husband's literary hero.

This film is devoid of both Hollywood gloss and false sentiment. An Italian production company and director are in charge, making it a grainy outsider's view of an America-based story. It opens with Carole King playing over a Donald Trump presidential campaign speech; the year is 2016, and the USA is vastly different from when Ella and John first met. They're a couple out of step with the present, each one the other's world, as all else changes around them. Their tour is as much down memory lane as the East Coast, a fact made more poignant by John's memory-related issues. 

The narrative locks into the couple's progress from the beginning; they've already hit the road when first we meet them. Mirren and Sutherland turn these characters into a wonderfully engaging pair. Ella is a driving force (even if her dementia-suffering husband does the actual driving); she's vivacious and life-embracing and tough as old leather, yet beneath all the chatter her loneliness is tangible. John alternates between the charm and dignity of his younger days and a childlike petulance, venting frustration at his own fragmenting mind. The genius of the performances is conveying the couple's history and the bond between them, even as Ella struggles to keep their connection alive.      

If all of that sounds weighty (and it is), there is also genuine hilarity - bizarre on-the-road adventures sometimes sparked by John's condition, sometimes by Ella's forthright approach to the obstacles they encounter. There's humour too, and poignancy, in the children's panicked response to their parents' apparent recklessness. Christian McKay and Janel Maloney make the most of limited screen time as son and daughter Will and Jane to convey the complexity of these inter-generational relationships. It's all beautifully observed - painful, and often painfully funny.

The Leisure Seeker has suffered some tough reviews along with the good ones, accused of being either predictable or syrupy. I'll grant the road-trip structure and nature of the Spencers' plight make the former inevitable, but there's too much pyjama-pissing reality and character grit for the latter to be remotely true. Emotionally this film is often too real for comfort. But while it doesn't blink in the face of harsher truth, it's ultimately a story of life-long love. And that will always be a story worth telling.

Gut Reaction: I laughed with hilarity at points and felt deeply discomfited at others, often in close succession. 

Where Are the Women?: Helen Mirren is at the height of her powers. And being Helen Mirren, those powers are considerable.

Ed's Verdict: 8/10. The Leisure Seeker is funny and touching. And maybe it's just too damn truthful for some critics to handle.