The Leisure Seeker, from Italian director Paolo Virzi, about the end of life, contrives to be peculiarly cosy, more sweet than bitter, from the off.
Senile literature professor John (Donald Sutherland) and his brave former Southern belle wife Ella (Helen Mirren), dying of cancer, escape their children’s care and take off for one last road trip through Trump’s America. In their clapped-out 1975 Winnebago, The Leisure Seeker, they head for the Florida Keys, to visit the house of Hemingway, a writer John knows by heart but can no longer actually read.
Their picaresque journey, punctuated by campside evenings spent looking through slides of their past life, is going only one way — but these are outstanding performances, embracing age, by Sutherland and Mirren (despite a dodgy accent). Iit’s indicative to see just how many European directors are setting their films in the US now, isn’t it?
