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A couple of old Dames make the slender
story of Ladies in Lavender surprisingly moving. Janet and Ursula (Maggie
Smith and Judi Dench), a pair of elderly sisters living on the Cornish coast,
discover a young Polish man named Andrea (Daniel Bruhl, Goodbye Lenin!)
washed ashore and barely alive. They nurse him back to health and discover that
he's a talented violinist--a fact also recognized by a mysterious young woman
(Natascha McElhone, The Truman Show), who may woo Andrea away from them.
The core of the movie is not its plot but the skillful and delicate play of
emotions underlying how the sisters treat Andrea; Ursula, a spinster, finds
herself sliding from maternal affection to an embarrassing but irresistible
schoolgirl crush. Ladies in Lavender captures something that few
contemporary movies bother to consider: Older men and women are as capable of
passion and desire as the young, but the young carelessly (and sometimes
cruelly) disregard the old. In the hands of Dench (Shakespeare in Love,
Iris) and Smith (California Suite, Gosford Park)--as well
as David Warner (Time After Time) as a bitter doctor--Ladies in
Lavender becomes a bit like a violin concerto itself: Discreet and subtle,
but finding in the smallest movements a richness of feeling. --Bret
Fetzer
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