A second stab at life

Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson star in a story about
a small but satisfying last chance.

It's as if you've stumbled into a storefront gallery with some low-slung jazz playing in the background. The images are mostly solitary ones — a man here, a woman there. Even in crowds they seem isolated. There is stillness and a sadness in these people — bare memories of what being with someone feels like lingering around the edges. You wish them a happy ending.

And that is the effect of Last Chance Harvey, writer-director Joel Hopkins' meditation on loneliness and love coming at a time in life when you might think those chances have all played out. Just about everything works in this small and surprisingly hopeful film, with beautifully attenuated performances by Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, who slip into the characters Hopkins has sewn for them like an old sweater.

The story nestled inside Last Chance Harvey is neither unfamiliar nor uncommon. Life is generally good, but the years chip away at one-time dreams; relationships fail or never quite happen; days are framed by a series of compromises big and small.

Falling short

Like a lot of his late-middle-aged compatriots, Harvey — that would be Hoffman — has long since come to terms with the notion of falling short. In the case of his career, it's writing jingles for TV commercials, his hopes of being a jazz musician long since packed away. "Were you any good?" he's asked at one point. "Not good enough," he replies.

Still, the job is something to hold onto, but Harvey finds even that in jeopardy as he heads to London for his daughter's marriage — his having fractured and died years ago. His relationship with daughter Susan (Liane Balaban) hasn't turned out as he had planned either. There are, simply put, any number of last chances facing Harvey as he boards the plane.

Life for Kate, played by Thompson, is waning too. In her 40s and still single — "my situation" is how her mother (Eileen Atkins) refers to it — she spends her days in data collection at Heathrow Airport, essentially asking other people about what we can only guess are their far more interesting lives. But mostly Kate's time is spent trying to cope with regrets as events conspire to loosen her increasingly tenuous hold on the notion that her life somehow will turn out differently.

Kate's upper lip may be stiff, but in Thompson's good hands every blow is quietly recorded — in the sag in her shoulders, the deep breath taken on the sly, the tears that she wills not to fall. Thompson lets us witness Kate's pain without pity. Hopkins takes his time getting Kate and Harvey together, moving seamlessly between their separate humiliations — hers on a blind date, among other numerous smaller slights, his at the rehearsal dinner and the wedding, where Susan has opted to have her stepfather give her away. The power in these moments, whether painful or comical or both, comes from their everydayness rather than cruel intentions.

Love blooms

When the couple finally does meet most of what happens unfolds as they walk the streets of London. In between meandering conversations, love blooms. The usually verbal Hoffman makes great use of silence and restraint, patient in unexpected moments, standing back to allow Kate time to feel.

There are other fine turns, especially Atkins as Kate's concerned and smothering mother, but the film, really, is carried ever so gently on the shoulders of Thompson and Hoffman (shoulders that have borne the weight of multiple Oscars). And while there are some false notes along the way, when Kate asks, "Shall we walk?" follow Harvey's lead and say yes.