Cinema: Going over 70

The Shameless Old Lady. Blithely disregarding the tendency of French film makers to accent the negatives of youth, this fledgling work winsomely salutes the positives of ripe old age. Seventyish but young at heart, the heroine has barely buried her husband when her grown children begin debating what to do about Poor Mother. Poor Mother soon ends the debate and infuriates the brood by doing just as she pleases.

She squanders her family’s meager monthly handouts on dining at a cafe or on rides in a hansom cab. After befriending an agreeable demi-prostitute and paving the primrose path for her grandson, she develops a haphazard taste for TV, movies, horse races and ice-cream sundaes. She eventually sells off her furniture, buys a jaunty little car, and finances a Communist cobbler who yearns to open a self-service shoe store. Before death overtakes her, the cheeky septuagenarian has lived two lives—one being the long years of servitude as daughter, wife and mother, the other made up of 18 brief but glorious months of scandalous self-indulgence.

The lady’s new lease on life originated as a fragile short story by Bertolt Brecht, and Writer-Director Rene Allio sketches it on film with the ease and delicacy of an artist who knows the value of priceless old things. Insurance against the occasional pangs of creeping senility is provided by French Stage Star Sylvie, a clear-eyed, quick-stepping, 81-year-old charmer who plays the title role with no pauses for sentimental nonsense. Whether cruising serenely up and down an escalator or boldly offering a well-weathered wrist to a perfume saleslady, Sylvie exudes the quiet joy of a space-age grandma who has briskly set out to conquer the space between rocking chair and requiescat.