Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont: A Retrospective

I spent this weekend with my friends, most especially my good friend S, who joined me and Matty and a few certain others to watch Little Darlings at The Castro Theater. I'd seen the movie when I was a girl, but I'd forgotten how good it was! You may know that the conflict rests on who will lose her keys first; Tatum O'Neill or Kristy McNichol. Since I don't want to give away the ending, I'll just say that if you are me, you will never really figure out who lost her keys, because these French love ambiguous endings.

Afterwards, Matty slipped S a video and made her promise to force me to watch it. It was Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, a film that I know Matty has seen six times. The trailer made me want to bite a chunk out of the seat in front of me, but Matty loves it so very much. So though I'd been resisting for so long, I thought I would try very very hard to love it. Per haps you know that I am practiced at the art of trying to love, and I thought I could apply the lessons I learned from Gary Coleman to Mrs. Palfrey, as performed by the facial twitchings of Joan Plowright:



It's the story of an elderly woman who checks herself in to the Claremont hotel for a lot of old people with wacky names. Each and every one is ignored by family members and has very little to make their lives enjoyable, which is pretty depressing, to tell you the truth. At the Claremont, the guests have little to do besides listen in on each others' conversations and rebel against the corrupt establishment; the kitchen, for intance, serves them only the food they have ordered, and this is a big disgrace, I agree. Of all the elderlies there, Mrs. Palfrey is the most restrained, perhaps because she's not Irish or slutty. She's suffered a great deal of disappointment at the hands of her grandson, Desmond, who doesn't answer his phone or visit his grandmother until weeks after she's arrived.

Luckily for Mrs. P, while she's running to avoid a rainstorm she falls and scrapes her legs. She's taken in by this hottie in a white blouse who sucks her wounds until she's young again! I found this behavior a little slutty myself, but I didn't blame Mrs. Palfrey for doing what she had to do in order to stay young forever.

The hottie pretends to be Mrs. Palfrey's grandson, but actually he is her lover, which creates a lot of confusion back at the old hotel. In his white blouse, the hot guy fights for the love of Mrs. Palfrey with a drunken Irishmen, and all kinds of hijinks ensue.

I really can't tell you any more about this film, but my friend S and I were inspired to make a collage which gives away the entire plot. Look!!!



It all just goes to show, doesn't it?

Well, I'm getting bored and tired, so I'm going to hit the hay.

'Night!