Grandma

A film set in California. Elle is a poet. In her seventies, and she has not written anything new for a long time. Her partner Violet died four months ago. They were together thirty-eight years. She is now with a younger woman. She ends it at the start of the film. That same day her granddaughter comes to the door. Sage is eighteen. She is pregnant and has an appointment that afternoon. Six hundred and thirty dollars are needed. Elle has no money. She cut up her credit cards and made a wind chime out of them. From there the film lasts one day. The two get into a car. The car is very old. It is Elle's own and she has driven it for years. There are places to go to find the money. First Sage's boyfriend. He gives nothing. Then a café. An old friend of Elle's works there. Then a tattoo parlour. Elle owes money. Then a secondhand bookshop. She tries to sell her books. Then a man. Karl was her husband years ago and it did not end well. The narrative opens the past at these stops. Each encounter tells a period. What the narrative is interested in is not money but generations: its idea is that three women look at the same matter from three places and that none of them fully understands the others. The last stop is Sage's mother. Judy is an executive and does not speak to Elle. That scene is the film's centre. Three generations in one room. The narrative proves none of them right. The ending is small. The narrative changes nobody. The running time is very short; a little over eighty minutes. The film was written for Lily Tomlin. Paul Weitz said he wrote it thinking of her. The car Elle drives is the actor's own; Tomlin has had it for years. Lily Tomlin, Julia Garner, Marcia Gay Harden, Judy Greer and Sam Elliott are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes small-scale American independent films and performance-centred narrative. Who it is not for: anyone looking for structure; the narrative is a series of stops and some sections are left unfinished.