Until the fat lady sings

Film review: Quartet (12a)
Running time 98 minutes
Rating: ***The BBC has an amazing ability whenever it wants to make a feature film – which happens every now and then – to enlist a host of great and familiar faces seemingly at a moment’s notice.
Quartet, the latest offering, is the film version of the Ronald Harwood stage play, and features more comfortable old faces than you can name in real time. The only thing missing is the comedy dog (although we do have a comedy gardener).
Quartet is the story of a very upmarket retirement home, full of singers, musicians and assorted other performers, all battling with varying degrees of senility and the general and increasing challenges which go hand in hand with old age.
Wilf (Billy Connolly), Cissy (Pauline Collins) and Reginald (Tom Courtney) are all previously famous performers already in residence, and then Jean (Maggie Smith) joins them when she becomes financially embarrassed.
There is tension of course – Reginald and Jean holding a flickering flame for one another, Wilf trying to engage amorously any passing female, and Cissy living in the past while trying to remember what she had for breakfast.
The home evidently relies on donations to keep going, and yet is threatened with closure. Might this year’s annual gala, including a quartet reprised by the former great singers – organised with great panache and a liberal dose of bullying by characters played by Michael Gambon and Andrew Sachs – save it?
The film centres on the preparations for the evening, fortunately supported by a caring staff and a wonderfully tolerant resident doctor.
The storyline is no more complex than that, but the skill of the actors makes the most of the themes of old age, memory, and dealing with a sense of faded glory. Connolly and Collins give particularly strong performances, playing characters each struggling to come to terms with their lot and resolutely looking towards the future, despite the challenges that lay ahead.
The main cast was more than ably supported by performers of a similar age and skill, among them Patricia Loveland, a 73-year-old musician and actor from Pangbourne, who only began acting in her 60s and who was personally invited to take part by the director Dustin Hoffman.
Quartet is a gentle and generous film and compares well with other similarly-themed movies. Another, A Song for Marion, is due on the screens next month.
There are those who would maintain it’s unlikely to attract praise as a classic – one can’t helping thinking of Fonda and Hepburn’s depiction of old age in On Golden Pond as being in that category – but still it has an enduring quality all of its own.