Ever since The Holdovers began making its festival run, there's been a bit of a rush to proclaim it director Alexander Payne's return to form. Some of this likely stems from the fact that it stars a perfect Paul Giamatti, who worked with Payne on his Oscar-winning 2004 film Sideways, as his presence goes a long way toward giving this bittersweet yet baggy dramedy a caustic beating heart. The rest may come from the natural festival overhype, where even good films are put on too high of a pedestal. Plus, The Holdovers has a comparatively low bar to clear after Payne's disappointing last film, Downsizing.
What remains at the core of The Holdovers, for all the layers the cast brings to the experience, are moments of a tonal weariness that unexpectedly sneak up. They don't entirely doom the affair, but they temper the uniformly terrific performances.
Things kick off in the early 1970s where we meet Paul Hunham (Giamatti) who works as a teacher at the stuffy New England prep school Barton Academy. Hunham seems to hold a great deal of affection for the institution though remains largely ambivalent about the stuck-up students that cycle through. When he is tasked with keeping an eye on the students who have nowhere to go on Christmas break, he starts to form a connection with the young Angus Tully (played by the debuting dynamite discovery Dominic Sessa). Angus and Paul begin by trading barbs before starting to learn what it is the other is internally carrying within them. Also in the picture is the school's hardworking cafeteria manager Mary Lamb, played by an underutilized yet dynamic Da'Vine Joy Randolph of last year's The Lost City, who recently lost her son in Vietnam.
This immense loss is handled more gracefully by Randolph's multifaceted performance than it is in the writing by veteran television scribe David Hemingson. Indeed, much of the film feels like it is coming dangerously close to being built around more broadly sketched past traumas rather than genuine human emotion. Though it has drawn comparisons to the work of great filmmakers like the late Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude), this too overstates the effectiveness and impact of what is being done here. When the trio of characters eventually hit the road, a tried and true narrative fallback to give more direction to what was an often meandering experience up until then, you're along for the ride because of the performances.
Though Giamatti has never not been a joy to see on-screen, he is on another level here, bringing both the necessary comedic timing and dramatic gravitas to hold The Holdovers together. Each and every single delivery, from his withering jabs to the personal confessions he gives, resonates. However, the writing itself is often far less nuanced than what he is doing with it. One such scene involves a brief interaction with a sex worker on the cold street that plays as oddly cruel, especially considering that the film is ostensibly about understanding others who have their own pains you can't see. It becomes clear that this only exists to awkwardly sett up a glaringly contrived character beat.
In spite of this, there's something wonderful to just seeing Giamatti, Sessa and Randolph bounce off one another. They make even the simple moments of sharing a meal or watching television together into something more. In many regards, more of this type of emphasis would have served the story far better and made the experience into something truly great rather than merely good. Much of the way that cinematographer Eigil Bryld (In Bruges) shoots such small scenes instills them with a texture and a sense of place that makes you long to stay in these moments just a bit longer. Often the most impactful thing can be sharing a moment in time away from the chaos and pain of the world. If only The Holdovers realized this too. Alas, just as happens for its characters, such realizations often come too late to fully hold on to the good thing you had going. ♦
THE HOLDOVERS
