The Leisure Seeker (2017)

THE LEISURE SEEKER  (2017)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Paolo Virzi
    Helen Mirren, Donald Sutherland, Christian McKay,
    Janet Moloney, Dana Ivey, Dick Gregory
This plays like a variation on the 1981 Henry Fonda/Katharine Hepburn movie "On Golden Pond", with Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren in the Fonda and Hepburn roles. It's about an older couple named John and Ella Spencer, who decide to take off on one last road trip in their vintage Winnebago, before his dementia and her cancer make that impossible. They don't have any time to lose. It's a leisurely ride most of the way, and Mirren and Sutherland play off each other the way two people might after being married for 5o or 60 years. While she chatters away to anybody who will reluctantly listen, he drifts in and out, alert and attentive one moment, lost and confused the next. It's a beautifully acted duet, reminiscent of the work Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay did together in "45 Years". John and Ella both know what they're up against, and they know that life for either of them without the other is no longer an option. It's their last ride together in more ways than one. The late Dick Gregory does a cantankerous cameo as an old flame of Mirren's.