At a film festival full of dark, underbaked or muddled material, Thelma is a gift. The fact that the film gives June Squibb – the type of actor most people know as scene-stealing characters rather than by name – her first leading film role at the age of 94 is reason enough to see it. Even more so that Thelma, from first-time writer-director Josh Margolin, pitches Squibb as perhaps the year’s least likely action hero: a nonagenarian of ordinary abilities who gets phone-scammed out of $10,000 and, inspired by Mission Impossible, embarks on a quest to retrieve it.
Margolin, a veteran of improv comedy, has a keen eye for the rhythms of daily life as a ninety-something. The film, which premiered at Sundance, is an ode to his real-life grandma Thelma, and her on-screen counterpart crackles with wit, wonder, slowed-down sweetness and stubbornness clearly derived from deep, genuine love. Like the real Thelma, Squibb’s character lives alone in a Los Angeles condo. Widowed two years prior, she’s on the precipice of independence, one fall or forgotten keys away from full-time care. Her daughter, Gail (Parker Posey), and son-in-law, Alan (Clark Gregg), hawkishly scan for signs of her decline; only her beloved grandson Danny (an endearing Fred Hechinger), a lost twentysomething struggling with independence of a different variety, engages with her as a full person, though he too over-presumes her handicaps.
