Best days: The Holdovers may leave you nostalgic for your own school days. Photo / Supplied
Best days: The Holdovers may leave you nostalgic for your own school days. Photo / Supplied
Alexander Payne made a star out of Paul Giamatti with 2004 wine country mid-life crisis drama Sideways, effectively turning the character actor into a leading man. Nearly 20 years on, the prolific actor reunites with the director who went on to make The Descendants and Nebraska for another fine character-drivencomedy drama.
Giamatti plays Mr Hunham, a paunchy, erudite and unlikeable history teacher at a New England boys’ boarding school who considers his students “lazy, rancid Philistines”. When he gets offside with the headmaster, he is forced to supervise the holdovers: kids who can’t go home for Christmas. Since Mr Hunham doesn’t have a personal life, it’s no great hardship but his young charges feel like they’ve been given a two-week detention with the school’s least-cool teacher.
Among them is the lanky, whip-smart, antisocial Angus Tully (an exceptional debut by newcomer Dominic Sessa) whose resistance to Mr Hunham’s gruff exterior is eventually smoothed away. As they kick about with the school’s resident cook Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph from The Lost City), this odd trio learn and teach one another important life lessons.
Payne is on top form, here directing an autobiographical script that’s a feature debut for veteran sitcom writer David Hemingson. Both creatives nail the 1970s tone and dialogue, and the characters’ wonderfully period-perfect way of being. With spot-on production design and a soundtrack filled with era pop hits and acapella Christmas carols, it feels like slipping back in time to a simpler era, where sneaking the school’s Communion wine was daring, and discussing sexuality in Ancient Greece with your teacher was de rigueur.
The film is swept along by the three terrific lead performances. Giamatti is typically excellent; as a grieving mother, Randolph’s Mary oscillates convincingly between coping and caving into her loss, and Sessa’s Angus is stroppy, wistful, secretive and guileless all at once.
We all have teachers we remember, for good or bad, and this twist on Dead Poets Society meets The Breakfast Club dressed up in hideous 70s attire may leave you nostalgic for your own school days.
Rating out of 5: ★★★★½
The Holdovers directed by Alexander Payne is in cinemas now.
