Blythe Danner is a sublime and funny actress, as we’ve seen in the Meet the Focker comedies, and decades of movies and stage plays. In I’ll See You in my Dreams, she’s the femme fatale of the geriatric set, sure to make you rethink 70. Vibrant, with it, her character Carol sings karaoke, plays golf, and is appropriately terrified of rats. She’s lonely, but not desperate, and perfect for a smooth guy named Bill who she begins to date. The actor Sam Elliott, with a miraculous shock of white hair, gives this mysterious stranger his joie de vivre. He’s attentive to Carol and knows what he wants. Not only that, he takes her into the water in his cabin cruiser for moonlight dinner. When he near proposes, to get his feet wet, he says, she says, get out of that water, stunned but not disinterested. He’s a good catch and they have chemistry.

 At a special luncheon for the movie at le Cirque hosted by Candice Bergen, Sam Elliott told me he’d like to be that guy. By the evening’s premiere at the Tribeca Grand Hotel, he was taking his assessment to the next step; spoiler alert: “He’s gotta go. You might find out what a s—t he is,” he laughed. Rhea Perlman, who plays Carol’s sidekick and card game buddy –along with actresses Mary Kay Place and the scene stealing June Squibb—attended the premiere with her family, daughter Lucy DeVito and husband Danny DeVito. Danner’s son, filmmaker Jake Paltrow attended with his wife, the artist Taryn Simon. Writer/ director Brett Haley seems an old soul, too young to have co-written (with Mark Basch) a movie about people his parents’ age. But hey, life’s challenges defy age. Haley says he’s now writing a film about 14 year olds.

Regina Weinreich

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