Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont [DVD] [2008]

Exploring issues of old age and loneliness, Dan Ireland has crafted an exquisitely touching and skillfully underplayed film that shows us that friendships can appear in the unlikeliest of places and can even change our lives. This is gorgeously produced and melancholy movie is not just about the isolation and marginalization of the elderly but signifies everything that is truly great about British cinema.

Mrs. Palfrey (Dame Joan Plowright) is an elderly widow who's been more or less emotionally abandoned by her only daughter and has just moved to London after the death of her husband to ostensibly stay at the Claremont Hotel, but also to be near her dorky 26-year-old grandson.

Pretty soon it becomes obvious that he has no time for her, and when after many weeks he hasn't managed a visit to this tiny residential hotel in Lancaster Gate where she's taken a room, the other tenants there begin to suspect that the boy maybe just figment of her imagination. To add to her dismay, the hotel is a little bit ramshackle and the only thing older than the dining room chairs are the people sitting in them.

One day, while running an errand, Mrs. Palfrey is rescued after a fall on the street by an impoverished writer (Rupert Friend). Invited into his basement flat, the couple strikes up a friendship, buoyed along by memory and poetry and the love of art.

Perhaps driven by the desire to prove that she does have someone that cares about her, she asks the young man, named Ludovic, to masquerade as her grandson to the other aged residents of the hotel. When she invites Ludovic to the dead-end dining room, the power of human connection proves infectious.

The daffy tenants love his refinement and old world manners - there are old duffers like Mr. Osborne (Robert Lang) and acid-tongued dowagers like Mrs. Arbuthnot (fabulous Anna Massey) who loves to mind everyone else's business. Of course, the handsome Ludovic performs splendidly as her grandson, until the real grandson turns up demanding answers.

Ireland's direction is languid and unhurried and he devotes a great deal of attention to the details of Mrs. Palfrey's faded existence at the Claremont as the guests wait for family that never visit and trying to fend off loneliness - and death - with eating, gossip and routine.

Meanwhile, Ludovic listens to Mrs. Palfrey's stories of a slight but considered life and finds specific wisdom there; the older woman warms herself at the fire of youth's passion and is glad for the reminder of her younger days. The legendary Joan Plowright maybe seventy-six, but she shines like a young star in this movie, giving a restrained, and beautifully nuanced performance.

Although she may be elderly, Mrs. Claremont is no fool and she's determined to make the most of her bourgeoning friendship with this younger man. The messages and themes are quite deep and reflective - age is actually profound and our compendium of memories lets us see farther. Youth lets us see brighter. Those who have both are the blessed.

Understated and quite beautiful, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont is all about friendship and where sometimes you have to create a family yourself. The ending is bittersweet, but these two people take a quiet, intelligent delight in their companionship and it's a delight that reverberates long after the movie is finished. Mike Leonard December 06.

The loneliness of old age shown by the somewhat decrepid surroundings of the Claremont Hotel opens this sensitively handled account. The dignity of Mrs Palfrey (Dame Joan Plowright)who is NOT going to be drawn into the greyness of the Claremont, is played out in contrast to others in her position, most notably Mrs Arbuthnot (Anna Massey) and the whole dreary picture of neglected old age is presented quite clearly, offset by the hopes of a grandson who one knows is not going to arrive.

The equal dreariness of no money, which is the lot of aspiring writer, Ludovic (Rupert Friend)is equally graphically portrayed, but once he and Mrs Palfrey meet, things begin to spark, and the two of them come alive. When he agrees to act as her grandson, his charm captivates all the hotel residents, and dreariness gives way to warmth, and waspishness becomes humour.

However, the realities of life are never far away, and it saves this account from mawkishness. Life IS hard for people on the fringe, but the gently expressed but deep regard for other human beings portrayed here, makes this ultimately a story of hope.

This is one of the nicest stories I have ever seen - just right for an old lady like me but also appreciated by my grand-daughter aged 36