Film Forum screening ‘Grandma’ this week
At this stage of her career, Lily Tomlin is a national treasure; from Laugh-In to The Search for Intelligent Signs in the Universe, to All of Me, to a regular stint on TV’s The West Wing, she’s an Emmy winner and a recent Kennedy Center honoree.
As such, it’s shocking to realize that her last leading film role was almost three decades ago (1988’s Big Business, co-starring Bette Midler). She had a minor role in Paul Weitz’s 2013 rom-com Admission, and it was while working with Tomlin that Weitz was able to find the voice of the lead character of another screenplay he had been writing for several years: Grandma, which comes to the Saratoga Film Forum this weekend.
In what has been called “the best role of her career” (David Lewis, San Francisco Chronicle), Tomlin stars as Elle, a lesbian poet with an acerbic wit coping with the death of her longterm life partner. Ending a four-month relationship with a younger admirer, Olivia (Judy Greer), she receives a visit from her 18-year-old granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner), who is pregnant and, her credit card having been confiscated by her mother, needs $600. Elle, unfortunately, is broke, so the two embark on a road trip to scrounge up the needed cash, paying unannounced visits to old friends and flames, including Elle’s ex-husband Karl (Sam Elliott). Along the way, they end up rattling skeletons and digging up secrets.
Grandma is not just an intergenerational road trip, but a small-scale character study, not only of Elle, but also of her granddaughter. It premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and served as the closing night film.
“The film,” said Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers, “is a scrappy delight that opens up feelings you can’t laugh off. Tomlin, the sorceress, leaves you dazzled and devastated.”
The Film Forum will screen Grandma at the Dee Sarno Theatre Thursday and Friday, Dec. 3 and 4, at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, Dec. 5, at 7:00 and 9:00 p.m., and Sunday, Dec. 6, at 3:00 p.m. General admission is $8, $6 for students and Film Forum members. For more information about the Film Forum, please visit www. saratogafilmforum.org.