Matthew Morgan (Michael Caine) is an 80-year-old US university professor whose longtime wife died very recently. Though he’s been living in France for quite some time, he doesn’t speak French. Since his wife’s death, his life bears little meaning to him. He just can’t overcome her absence. That is until he meets Pauline (Clémence Poésy), a dance instructor who’s easily half his age. She too is a loner, but would want to make a meaningful emotional connection. So perhaps there’s love after loss and solitude. Perhaps there’s yet one last love to be lived.
Yes, it does sound corny and overworked, and precisely because it is very much so. Not only does Mr. Morgan’s Last Love, by Sandra Nettelbeck, hinge on a premise we all know by heart, but its entire development is so overridden with clichés you’d think it’s actually a parody.
Which it is not. When it comes to cinema, very few things are more annoying than a film that presents itself as highly dramatic and profound when it’s actually uninspired and shallow. It’s not even formulaic in an effective way — which would’ve been a perfectly legitimate option.
Long ago, Michael Caine used to star mostly in pretty good movies. Or, at least, decent ones. In these last years, that has changed abruptly. Once in a while, he can fill in the shoes of likable characters such as Alfred, Batman’s butler in Nolan’s Batman movies. But for the most part, he delivers affected, artificial performances that rely on a series of tics, gestures, and voice inflexions meant to be the expression of he who knows what. Deep despair? Thoughtfulness? Wisdom? Go figure it out.
So this tired university professor, yet above all a widower in pain, faces equally artificial and affected situations and incidents that never flow organically from the script, but instead are implanted by a Screenwriting 101 handbook. Meaning, for instance, his grown up children won’t accept his girlfriend, the age difference will prove to be a hardship, the girl may be an opportunist, and perhaps it’s all just an illusion. But in the end love may conquer all. In any case, by the time Mr. Morgan’s Last Love finishes, you are bound to have stopped caring for characters who are mere cardboard figures who never strike a genuine chord.
Production notes
Last Love / Mr. Morgan’s Last Love (Germany, Belgium, France, US, 2013). Written and directed by Sandra Nettelbeck. With Michael Caine, Clémence Poésy, Jane Alexander, Justin Kirk, Gillian Anderson. Cinematography by Michael Bertl. Music by Hans Zimmer. Editing by Christoph Strothjohann. Running time: 116 minutes.
