Film Review: The Holdovers is an absorbing tale with superb performances 

The Holdovers is written by David Hemingson and directed by Alexander Payne

The Holdovers (Universal)

• The Holdovers
• ★★★★☆
• Cinema release

The convoluted ceremonies of male bonding have previously been explored in Alexander Payne’s Sideways (2004) and Nebraska (2013), and he returns to the theme again in The Holdovers (15A), which is set at Barton, a New England boys’ boarding school, over the Christmas holidays in 1970.

This year’s batch of ‘Christmas orphans’ with no homes to go to include Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) and Teddy Kountze (Brady Hepner), who aren’t pleased to learn that their Classics teacher, Mr Hunham (Paul Giamatti), will be overseeing their grim festivities.

A principled man disliked by students and peers alike, Hunham laments the slipping standards of the current generation and the ongoing corruption of the Barton ethos. Written by David Hemingson, with Payne directing, The Holdovers isn’t especially innovative in terms of plot: expecting to discover that the enforced proximity and humdrum schedule causes teacher and boys to learn some lessons from one another, we are not disappointed.

And yet The Holdovers is a genuinely absorbing tale, in large part because the performances are superb. Giamatti has been taking home awards for his portrayal of the hypocritical man-out-of-time Hunham, and he gets strong support from Dominic Sessa as the troubled teen Angus. Even so, the best performance of the film is that of Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who is sensational as Mary Lamb, a grieving mother who rules Barton’s kitchen with a rod of iron.