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.
All of this is portrayed humorously, with a light, cheeky rhythm for Thelma’s old-person habits and curtailed world – weekly pill trays, handwritten passwords, hours of knitting, one finger pecking the keyboard at a time – that never tips into mockery. Same for the small-time scam, familiar to many a person with an older relative, in which anonymous callers convince Thelma that Danny needs $10,000 in cash for bail, mailed to an address in Van Nuys. This being an analog scam, the police are of no help, and her family brushes off the incident as a chaotic if funny indicator of her vulnerability. But Thelma, somewhat correctly viewing the mistake as a referendum on her capability and will, laces up her Brooks walking shoes and starts scheming to get the money back.
The journey, a Tom Cruise-inspired action arc if the obstacles were stairs and the gadgets hearing aids, is a delight to behold. Margolin mostly strikes a difficult balancing act: sweet but not too cloying, sharp on the limitations of old age without poking fun, valuing the dignity Thelma seeks in a society that infantilizes and marginalizes elderly people while recognizing the real diminishment of the years. Squibbs’s Thelma is at once a heroine of iron will and too stubborn for her own good. Despite her protestations, she can’t undertake the plot without help, in the form of Ben, a nursing home-bound friend she uses for his electric two-seat scooter. The role is a bittersweet send-off for the late blaxploitation action icon Richard Roundtree in his final film role, complete with a monologue about how he wasn’t what he once was that left a lump in my throat.
The film, thankfully, works with real observations of life in one’s very sunset years, something we don’t see nearly enough on screen. The experience of a fall is scary and devastating and potentially quest-ending; the process of getting on a bed genuinely fraught, which Margolin, cinematographer David Bolen and sound designer Nathan Ruyle effectively and convincingly dress up in the visual and sonic language of an action movie. (It helps that the score by Nick Chuba is affectionately inspired by the work of Lalo Schifrin, composer of the Mission Impossible theme.) Sometimes things are dialed up a little too far, a little too twee – the hijinks between Thelma’s family and two nursing home workers played by Nicole Byer and Quinn Beswick, for example, tip fully into sitcom territory, too far removed from the film’s more grounding bits.
Still, these are quibbles; Thelma is slickly made, real-life grandmother sweet, overall warm and winsome. It’s likely to draw laughs if you’ve ever coached someone on how to use a computer, tears if you’ve ever loved an elderly person who held tightly to their dignity. And Squibb is as understatedly funny and commanding as you’d expect. Both actor and character remain, despite all societal and personal forces to the contrary, absolutely vital even as the circumstances and potential of life shrink. What a joy to witness it.
Thelma is showing at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution
