The Holdovers (2023)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Holdovers (2023) – A. Payne

Director Alexander Payne and actor Paul Giamatti previously teamed up for Sideways (2004) where the actor played a similarly bummed out but know-it-all character touring California’s wine country. Here, decades later, he’s the misanthropic classics-spouting history teacher, unloved by students and colleagues alike, stuck baby-sitting students whose parents left them at boarding school over the 1970 Christmas break.  Payne and screenwriter David Hemingson do a wonderful job fleshing out the characters of those stuck at Barton School which also include Da'Vine Joy Randolph’s school cook Mary Lamb and Dominic Sessa’s troubled student Angus Tully.  As in Payne’s other films, the film advances via humorous episodes (a sporting accident, a Christmas party, a trip to Boston) and the characters’ relationships with each other deepen and they learn something about themselves too.  But Payne avoids the saccharine by ensuring that the proceedings are adult and authentic feeling.  He (and his team) also captures the time-period not only with perfect set-decoration/art-direction/cinematography (think The Paper Chase) but also in the social, race, and class relations depicted (amiably defiant of norms in some cases perhaps).  Bittersweet is the dominant flavour here but that’s not to say that your heart won’t also be warmed. So good.