The Holdovers: this high-school heartwarmer is no ordinary throwback

After the disappointment of the high-concept, futuristic Downsizing (2017), The Holdovers finds director Alexander Payne gloriously back on prime form. The film, which for once he didn’t script – that he entrusted to experienced TV writer David Hemingson (Kitchen Confidential, 2005-6;  Whiskey Cavalier, 2019), creating his first film script – reunites him with Paul Giamatti, star of his earlier gem Sideways (2004). Here, as with his Sideways character Miles, Giamatti plays a man who at first seems largely unlikable – but who, as we gradually come to realise, dislikes himself more than anyone else could and, for all his sarcasm and bile, deserves our sympathy.

The story, as Payne readily admits, was lifted from a little-known film by Marcel Pagnol, Merlusse (1935). Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, who teaches ancient history at Barton Academy, a posh boarding school near Boston. His caustic wit burns from the start. When a pupil protests over a low grade, “Sir, I can’t fail this class!”, Paul responds with a cruel grin: “Oh, don’t sell yourself short, Mr Kountze. I truly believe that you can.”

Having alienated the principal, along with almost everyone else at the school, staff and pupils alike, Paul gets landed with the task of looking after the ‘holdovers’ – those pupils whose parents can’t take them home for the two-week Christmas break. As it turns out, this is narrowed down to a single pupil, the bright but troubled 15-year-old Angus (Dominic Sessa in his first-ever screen role). Angus’s mother, recently remarried to a man who dislikes his stepson, has phoned to tell him they don’t want him home for the break; they’ve chosen this fortnight to take their delayed honeymoon trip. The third ‘holdover’ is Mary Lamb, the school’s head cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph). Her only child won a scholarship to Barton; but as she couldn’t afford to send him to college he was drafted, and died in Vietnam. 

A clash between Paul and Angus is inevitable – but for all its virulence it opens up a channel of communication between them and, with Mary’s help, the three can sit companionably down together for a Christmas Day lunch. This unlooked-for mutual sympathy deepens, with Paul confessing to Angus “I find the world a bitter and complicated place and it seems to feel the same way about me.  I guess you and I have this in common.”

Any risk of life-lesson clichés is readily tossed aside by the warmth and humour of Payne’s treatment of these characters, and by the situations – inventive but never far-fetched – that he and Hemingson create for them. So much so that the climax of the action, involving an act of self-sacrifice on Paul’s part we could never have dreamt of when we first encountered him, becomes not only deeply moving but wholly convincing. Giamatti’s performance even outclasses the one he gave in Sideways. Despite his total lack of previous screen experience, Dominic Sessa matches his co-star in every scene they share; his blend of forthrightness and quirky defiance suggesting he’s set for potential stardom. Randolph appears in slightly fewer scenes, but on every occasion she’s well up there with them both.

The Holdovers isn’t just set in the early ‘70s – in many ways it looks and feels, in terms of camera angles and the texture of the photography and set design, like a movie from the era. Payne himself notes as much, saying: “To a certain degree, I’ve been trying to make ’70s movies my whole career.” And as if to remind us, when Paul and Angus visit a movie-house together, we see a brief clip from Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man (1970). The choice of music – Andy Williams’ ‘The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,’ Cat Stevens’ ‘The Wind’, Artie Shaw’s ‘When Winter Comes,’ and a melancholy score by Mark Orton (who also scored Payne’s Nebraska, 2013) – skilfully evokes that period. As in Hal Ashby’s The Landlord (1970) and Harold and Maude (1971), as well as in Elaine May’s A New Leaf (1970) and Milos Forman’s Taking Off (1971), the overall mood is humorous and sombre, warm yet bittersweet. 

The visual structure of The Holdovers, too, right from its vintage studio idents in the opening credits to the slow zooms, the painterly wide shots of the snowbound Massachusetts landscape and the transitions affected with fades and wipes, unmistakably link us back to that same era. Payne even creates a simulated 35mm feel to the lensing, shooting on digital but adding in the wear and tear of a film print. Nostalgic, funny, moving and thought-provoking, this may well qualify, in a career not short of outstanding achievements, as its director’s finest and most immersive film yet.

 ► The Holdovers screened at the 2023 London Film Festival. It is scheduled for release in UK cinemas on 19 January.