The Holdovers (2023) * * *

 

Directed by: Alexander Payne

Starring:  Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Brady Hepner, Carrie Preston

Winter break 1970.  Most of the students of a New England prep school are headed home for the holidays.  However, a few remain due to a variety of reasons, and the task of babysitting them falls on Paul Hunham (Giamatti), who is naturally less than enthusiastic about the job.  His headmaster assigned Paul this ignominious duty because Paul did not pass a senator's son in one of his classes.   Paul doesn't understand or care to understand that the senator is a wealthy donor to the school.  In his mind, senator's son or not, the kid didn't earn the grade.  He wears his inflexibility as a badge of honor, allowing him to think he is somehow morally superior to students and faculty members alike.

Paul gets along well with Mary Lamb (Randolph), the school cook who feeds Paul and the holdovers three square meals a day while navigating her grief at losing her son in Vietnam.  Soon, only Angus (Sessa) is left on campus to spend Christmas with Paul and Mary.   The Holdovers is about how the frosty relationship with Angus and Paul thaws into friendship.  What The Holdovers lacks in originality it makes up for in subtle, but powerful moments which define Angus and Paul.  Both men undergo changes and learn to understand one another.  We see the epitome of wasted potential in Paul and the possibility of such in Angus, and both find ways to reverse that.  

Giamatti last teamed with director Payne in Sideways (2004), a great romantic comedy about wine lovers and their relationships with the women in their lives.   Paul has no women in his life, but he has his eye on a fellow staffer (Preston) who seems to like him too.  The Holdovers is the sum of its pitch-perfect performances and tender scenes in which we see two men at different ages and stages of their lives learning to connect and even change.  Mary is someone they both admire and respect.  Her son went to the school and was a standout student, only to die in Vietnam before his 20th birthday.  

The best Alexander Payne films contain social satire (Election) and flawed, but fully-developed characters (Sideways) who can't help but mess up when in reach of the brass ring or the ideal woman.  In The Holdovers, the brass ring either showed up a long time ago or has yet to show itself.  The question is whether Paul or Angus can snatch it before it goes away.