Elsa & Fred

Screen veterans Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer rise above the patronising cuteness imposed by co-writer/director Michael Radford (Il Postino) in this tale of a late-blossoming love affair. Elsa (MacLaine) is a septuagenarian fantasist who projects all her romantic whims - inspired by her favourite film, La Dolce Vita - onto her new next-door neighbour, the crotchety Fred (Plummer). He feels life is over at 80, and being polite is apparently a waste of time, too. Elsa's thwarted attempts to regale him with wild yarns of her youth (she insists Picasso painted her portrait, a story Fred treats with due scepticism) can make her seem like a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown rather than a woman in love. The rapport between these two fine actors develops nicely, though, as Fred is inevitably swept up in her enthusiasm. A touch of melodrama seems unavoidable, but this is a romance characterised by lightness and whimsy - not always the reserve of the youthful.