Mr. Morgan's Last Love (2013)

One of my all time favorites.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

There is no end in sight to curiosity about unlikely couples with decades of age difference. Well here the couple finding themselves in a very hard to define type of relationship consist of the actors Michael Caine, age 78 at the time of the filming, and the lovely and soulful Clémence Poésy, age 29 respectively. This film is quite educational for people who keep wondering what is possible and what definitely is not achievable in a relationship with almost 50 years age difference, and what a couple like this might actually talk about between them and what not. The acting is absolutely world class even in the smallest roles, let alone the lead couple who give their particular situation and the twists it will lead them to amazing credibility. The international production has resulted in many impressive shooting locations beautifully captured on film, yes real film. Both intrinsically sad and optimistic about the power of love in spite of everything, Last Love will leave you in tears but in a good way. Do yourself a favor and see it, you might learn a thing or two about life you didn't know before.

We were able to view this movie on Netflix streaming. Set and filmed in Paris and surrounding areas, Michael Caine is 80- ish Matthew Morgan, retired Princeton professor living in Paris with his wife. As the movie begins we see that she is dying, we find out later she had cancer. His wife had been the love of his life and now, just over three years later we see him going through the paces of everyday life but not really excited about anything. His Paris home and his country home, his wife's favorite, are indications that he is financially very well off.Matthew's life gets a spark, or as they say in the movie "a crack in his world", to let some light in, in the person of 30-ish Clémence Poésy as Pauline. They have a strictly chance encounter on a city bus and something makes them attracted to each other. For Pauline it may be because he reminds her of her deceased father.Nonetheless they become friends, they have lunch, he goes to the dance studio where she teaches. Then when something happens that draws Matthew's two adult children to Paris, they immediately suspect that Pauline is trying to get to Matthew's money.The adult children are Gillian Anderson (of X Files) as Karen Morgan and Justin Kirk as bitter, angry Miles Morgan. There are some old issues never resolved and it takes up a good portion of the last half of the movie.It moves a bit slowly most of the time and at almost two hours requires some patience, but overall I like the movie a lot. The resolution of everything is not what I would have expected but fits in a certain mystical way.SPOILERS: Matthew tries, unsuccessfully, to die by sleeping pill overdose. Pauline is upset with him, the two adult children travel from the USA to be with him, and Miles especially is contentious towards Pauline. A number of things happen, various things are said, Matthew knew he was not a good father, he never wanted children but had them because his wife wanted them. In the end Pauline realizes that Miles was just a younger version of Matthew and the two of them kiss, passionately, Matthew sees this, he tells Miles, if you hurt her I will kill you, even though you are my son. In the end Matthew tells Miles to take care of her, Matthew ends his own life, when Miles is leaving he tells Pauline he will be back for her.

Matthew Morgan (Michael Caine) is a retired Princeton professor of philosophy who lives in Paris and speaks no French. His wife (Jane Alexander) is the one who speaks french and then she dies. His life for three years have been one of passing the time. He meets Pauline Laubie (Clémence Poésy) on the bus. She is an extremely helpful dance instructor. They become best friends. He is hospitalized after taking too many sleeping pills or too little depending on the view point. His two kids Miles Morgan (Justin Kirk) and Karen Morgan (Gillian Anderson) visit. They are certain that Pauline is a gold digger.There is a nice easy manner about Clémence Poésy. She keeps this movie slightly interesting despite it being such a slow crawl. The relationship between Michael Caine and her is somewhat interesting. It seems the movie needed to stay with them. For about an hour and a half, the movie works reasonably well. Then the ending goes down the wrong path. It tries to be a movie about a father and son which it doesn't really introduce until the second half of the movie. It would be so much better to have the movie stay solely with Caine and Poésy.

5/10 There are only four reasons this movie doesn't get a three (or lower) out of ten: firstly, and most importantly, Michael Caine's performance: even amongst a failing movie he manages to emerge victorious in a riveting performance, which is the main and probably only reason I endured sitting in for two hours, never getting bored and actually being involved with the movie despite it trying so hardly to keep me away from itself. Clemence Poesy's performance and charisma is another reason for which you get effortlessly dragged into the narrative, yet just as quickly dragged out. The other two reasons are the calm and beautiful cinematography and the ideas the movie is trying to deal with. Yet it simply does not manage to tackle them as much as it thinks it is. The screenplay is so uneven, the drama so uninteresting and senseless, character motivations change randomly throughout and in the end the movie just feels a little too much pretentious. With the exception of the two leads the actors are actually delivering very bad performances and whenever they were talking I was cringing. The movie also relies too much on coincidence and takes too much for granted: continuously throughout it I was screaming at the screen "fuck you, how did that come to happen!?" and to this contributed a terrible editing that cut from place to place in a very weird way. The direction was all over the place and managed to make Hans Zimmer, one of the grates composer of all times, compose a dull score. Despite having some interesting, yet no really noble, intentions and two very good performances from its leads, the movie is a failure in what it wished to deliver and there is close to zero true emotion.