Featured Movies
Partners
Luck by Chance
London-set romantic drama starring Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson as losers experiencing late-flowering love
Last Chance Harvey finds Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson on top form as veteran losers in love who decide to seize the day before arthritis sets in. It's the years of baggage they bring while on a day out in London that lifts the film above so many other romantic comedies, which are frequently the reserve of the vacuous, the wide-eyed and the wrinkle-free. So much bitter disappointment, all of it written of their faces, has left Harvey (Dustin Hoffman) and Kate (Emma Thompson) lagging behind in the race to find love, and that makes the quest all the more urgent. What makes it surprising, despite a familiar plot, is the fact that these two show a greater level of faith and optimism in life than those neurotic twentysomethings who apart from watching too many watered-down Woody Allen rip-offs, bear no emotional scars. Harvey has taken many hard knocks, the latest being the threat of getting fired from his job writing the music for advertising jingles. He has that subdued sweaty aura of Jack Lemmon (in, say, The Apartment ) when he assures his boss that he'll only need a day off to fly from New York to London to attend his daughter's wedding and be back fresh on Monday morning to land that proverbial big contract. His focus is so narrow that he barely notices Kate when she approaches him at Heathrow wanting a moment of his time to participate in a survey. She takes the brush-off like so many others with a polite smile and dignified acceptance, though Thompson plays it with a moving undercurrent of resignation. British writer-director Joel Hopkins engineers a few more near-miss meetings and comes dangerously close to undermining the pure simplicity of the story before it's properly begun. In that tense waiting period before they finally engage, we're given a snapshot of their lives in isolation. Harvey's position as father-of-the-bride is usurped by the inevitably smarmy step-dad (James Brolin, not trying too hard). Meanwhile Kate rushes back and forth between her busybody mum (a wonderfully beady-eyed Eileen Atkins), humiliating blind dates and creative writing classes where she's forced to listen to geriatric sex fantasies. No wonder she tries to hide behind her book when Harvey turns up at the airport again. He's fired just as he's about to board his plane (and bale out on the wedding) and chats up Kate on a reckless impulse. It's that spontaneity that eventually wins Kate over and injects the film with a new, youthful vigour. They bound around London like teenagers with Hopkins deriving energy from the city as well as the leads. Still, they're old enough and wise enough not to throw all caution to the wind. Kate convinces Harvey that he must attend his daughter's wedding, even if it means sitting at a distant table, and agrees to be his date. Of course she needs a dress leading to the obligatory shopping montage where Harvey watches her twirl in silly frocks. It's a cliche, but with Thompson there's a greater sense of fun and poignancy about it because she's aware of her age (and figure) and compensates with modest humour. Hoffman is on the same wavelength, determined to laugh in the face of defeat. The comedy springs naturally from that self-consciousness instead of being a self-conscious comedy and the resulting chemistry is a delight to behold. Even if they don't look like the perfect match, the feeling is there and it only becomes more powerful as time goes on. Verdict Hoffman and Thompson prove you can never be too old to make memories and their romance is certainly one to remember. |
