TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2023 REVIEW! With films like Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, and Nebraska, Alexander Payne is a director who knows how to put character front and center, hire amazing actors, and have just enough levity and plot to draw you along through the quirky characters’ defining life events. The Holdovers is no different, but here he’s going for kind of a 70s throwback vibe, setting the film in a New England boarding school during that time period and using music, titles, and camera work to evoke that place and time successfully.
“…insists on rigorous academic standards…no matter how rich or powerful their families may be.”
Paul Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a teacher after my own heart (I’m a college professor), who insists on rigorous academic standards and ethical behavior from his students, no matter how rich or powerful their families may be. This, and perhaps his seeming lack of outside interests and body odor, make him extraordinarily unpopular with nearly everyone. The head cook at the boarding school, Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), at least tolerates him, but she’s barely getting by after the loss of her son, who was previously a student at the school. Over the winter break, these two lonely souls are tasked with watching a handful of students whose parents won’t let them come home for the holidays for various reasons. Eventually, one of the students’ fathers takes most of them on a surprise ski trip. Paul has to effectively babysit Angus (Dominic Sessa), a student with academic promise but serious behavioral issues.
Throughout much of The Holdovers, Angus and Paul have a battle of wills, with Paul trying to inflict strict discipline and Angus rebelling and acting out. But as Christmas day creeps closer, the duo and Mary can’t help but get to know a little more of each other’s secrets. They all have some dark things in their past that are keeping them apart from others. But can they open up enough to learn from each other?
