When the weather is
bad on a Saturday in Wellington, there are not a lot of warm and dry
options, which is how four of us happened to go to the movies to see the
improbably titled The Best Exotic
Marigold Hotel. Sunny, vibrant,
noisy – it was a perfect choice for a gloomy afternoon.
You don’t have to be
retired to like this film, but it is about retirees, a group of Brits who
cannot bear the prospect of living out their years in the bland, beige security
of a seniors’ community. They opt instead for the foreign glamour of a residential hotel in Jaipur.
The cast, including Tom Wilkerson, Bill Nighy,
Judy Dench, and Penelope Wilton and Maggie Smith (both fresh from Downton
Abbey) is superb. They are somewhat
typecast (Maggie Smith comes to India for hip surgery hoping that no actual Indians
will be involved), but the story is not as predictable as one might
imagine. These are the feisty old folks we all want to be – edgy, adventurous
and open to possibility.
Best of all, they all
look their age, and they look marvellous!
Judy Dench is adorable – and wrinkled-- much more appealing physically
than she is as the airbrushed Dame Sybil Thorndike in My Week with Marilyn, the film I saw on my Air New Zealand return.
Which reminds me. The hotel’s complete title is The Best Exotic
Marigold Hotel for the Elderly and Beautiful.
Now there is a residence
where I would really enjoy retirement-- especially if Judy Dench were living next
door.
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