The Leisure Seeker

The Leisure Seeker is one of those films that goes against all expectations of it's trailer. The trailer I watched a few weeks back portrays a very different film to the film I watched yesterday. TBH I wish the film I was expecting had appeared. Not that this was bad at all but just....well I'd feel better.

Ella and John Spencer are an elderly couple who decide to take their motor home south along the East coast of America to visit the home of Ernest Hemingway in the Florida Keys. Ella and John are also very sick, Ella physically and John mentally. They are two people who are not in good shape and the idea of them heading off on holiday has their grown up children terrified but Ella insists all is well.

I liked this and found it was better than poor reviews online have made it out to be. It's always a joy watching two old pro's like Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland plying their trade and when you put them together sparks fly. This is a hard film to talk about without going into spoilers but it's a story that will hit home hard for a lot of people. Actors like Mirren and Sutherland have been around for so long it feels like we know them and seeing them in pain is tough to watch. There's a lot of shitty things about being an adult but the shittiest thing is watching your parents getting older if you are lucky enough to still have them. The aging process is a bastard and the toll it takes on the body and mind is a tough one to watch. It's not all grim thankfully and there's some gentle comedy here which helps make everything slightly more palatable. Some of it works (any scene with their shotgun) and some of it doesn't (any scene of their children) but it makes the medicine go down easier.

On the surface there's not much depth here but it's there. Early in the film a snippet of famous dialogue from Donald Trump is heard and it weighs heavily over the film. Sickness and frailty in this stands for the death and decay of the American dream. Make America Great Again rallies are juxtaposed with failing state facilities and younger people displaying a fundamental lack of respect for the generation that made them. What was once admired is now laughed at. The baby boomers who turned the country into such a success are fading away and whats left is a over-commercialised unfriendly mess.

Mirren as Ella,as always, does great work but Donald Sutherland as John steals the film. His mental health has turned him childlike and forgetful but in his lucid moments he's a joy, recalling his former life as a teacher and waxing lyrical on his beloved Hemingway to who ever will listen. These moments have us the audience looking through Ella's eyes, loving John when he's in great form and getting frustrated when his condition robs him from us again. Sutherland is 83 now and I hope we see work of this calibre from him for a while yet.

If you are looking for something other than the crash bang wallop of CGI infused blockbusters you won't go wrong with this but just......be prepared.