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aka - Last Love
Germany/Belgium,/USA/France 2012
Directed by
Sandra Nettelbeck
116 minutes
Rated M

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
1.5 stars

Mr. Morgan's Last Love


I’ve held German director Sandra Nettelbeck in high esteem ever since her 2001 film, Mostly Martha, (she has only directed two films since then, neither of which I’ve seen) but I’m calling off all bets after seeing Mr. Morgan's Last Love, a terminally mawkish picture-book dirge that makes Lasse Hallström’s brand of sentimentality look like calculated cynicism.

Michael Caine, with an American accent that is even worse than the one he sported in Hallström’s 1999 film, The Cider House Rules, plays a retired American philosophy professor, Matthew Morgan, living in Paris and grieving the loss of his beloved wife (Jane Alexander).  One day he meets a young Frenchwoman, Pauline (Clémence Poésy), and a ray of light enters his life.  But when his estranged children  (Justin Kirk and Gillian Anderson) turn up after his failed suicide attempt, the dynamics between the four become tense

Adapted by the director from a novel by Françoise Dorner, the insuperable problem with the overall scenario is that a very attractive, indeed positively gamine, young Parisienne (a teacher of cha-cha and line dancing, no less) would suddenly devote her attentions to a rather dull, and probably musty-smelling octogenarian who refuses to even try to learn her language (a running joke which is only slightly better than attempts to have Pauline cutely mangle her English). There are feeble attempts to justify her attachment by giving her father issues and a history of experiences that confirm her in the view that all men are the same (except for Matthew, bien sur)m but none of it sticks. 

However, this is only the most egregious problem with a script that keeps going exactly where you hoped it would not in realizing its entirely predictable narrative as characters enter and leave on cue with the kind of logistical smoothness that can only occur in an very unimaginative scriptwriter’s imagination (Gillian Anderson’s character, one who is essentially irrelevant to the plot, is only the most obvious example of this). And the ending simply beggars belief in the convenience stakes.

Nettlebeck dresses up this pap up with picture postcard settings that ensure that the Eiffel Tower or some other instantly recognisable Parisian icon is in every other shot whilst Hans Zimmer’s subdued score tinkles soporifically  in the background.  The film develops some small measure of dramatic substance in the latter stage as it touches on the vexed topic of inheritance but overall Mr. Morgan's Last Love is simply a waste of everyone’s time.

 

 

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