FILM OF THE WEEK THE HOLDOVERS

(UK 15/ROI 15, 133 mins, Dazzler Media, available now via Premium Video On Demand rental, available from April 8 on Amazon/BT TV Store/ iTunes/Sky Store/TalkTalk TV Store and other platforms, available from April 22 on DVD/Blu-ray.

Classics teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) doesn’t tolerate mediocrity from his students at Barton Academy boarding school – or “lazy, vulgar, rancid little Philistines”, as he calls them while marking exam papers.

He is a stickler for rules and incurs the wrath of headmaster Dr Hardy Woodrup (Andrew Garman) by failing the son of a powerful senator.

As punishment, Woodrup selects Paul to remain on campus over Christmas to chaperone the boys who won’t be travelling home for the holidays.

Fate conspires to reduce the Yuletide stragglers to Paul, head cook Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and his student

Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), whose vacation in St Kitts with his mother (Gillian Vigman) is cancelled at the last minute. This unholy trinity thaws out common ground in frozen seclusion.

The Holdovers is a vibrant portrait of schooldays angst in the vein of Dead Poets Society set in a 1970s working-class New England town blanketed by Christmas-time snow.

Scripted with artful precision and an occasional sentimental flourish by David Hemingson, Alexander Payne’s delightful coming-of-middle-age comedy drama reunites the filmmaker with the magnificent Giamatti 20 years after they made Sideways.

Sessa makes a sensational debut as the 17-year-old outcast who is terrified of becoming his father and Oscar winner Joy Randolph lets the emotional dam burst as her character laments the recent death of her son in Vietnam.

The denouement plucks the most obvious heartstring but a lazy, vulgar, rancid little Philistine like me loves an emotional pay-off that leaves a lump in the throat.