Love and Pain and the Whole Damned Thing

 

Love and Pain and the Whole Damned Thing 1973

• Director: Alan J Pakula
• Also seen by this director: The Pelican Brief, Presumed Innocent, Sophie’s Choice, Klute
• Based on a book: no
• Cast: Maggie Smith, Timothy Bottoms
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Maggie Smith – Downton Abbey, Harry Potter, The Lady in the Van, Hotel Marigold 1&2, My Old Lady, Quartet, From Time to Time, Becoming Jane, Keeping Mum, Ladies in Lavender, Gosford Park, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Gosford Park, David Copperfield, Tea with Mussolini, The First Wives Club, Richard III, The Sister Act 1&2, A Room with a View, The Quartet, Oh What a Lovely War, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
• Timothy Bottoms – The Last Picture Show, Johnny Got His Gun
•  Why? Maggie Smith
• Seen: 8 August 2020

             Young Walter (Bottoms) is a depressed, asthmatic, socially inept underachiever in an eminent academic American family. He is coerced into participating in a gruelling bike tour of Spain with a group of over-achieving students. He escapes onto a bus tour and encounters middle-aged Lila (Smith) who, it turns out, is quite socially inept herself and suffering from a mysterious malady.

       They stumble and bumble into friendship then love.

       It’s an odd mix of slapstick, absurdity and misery. The story itself is rather banal set in a postcard picturesque Spain. As expected, it’s Maggie Smith who makes it worth watching although it is difficult not to see her as the forty years older Professor McGonagall.

       For Dame Maggie’s sake:

 

3* of 5 (Hal says 3 ½)