Wonkette Movie Night: Grandma

'Where can you get a reasonably priced abortion in this town?'

Three generations of women: granddaughter, mother, and grandma, complicated people with complicated relationships. Grandma is the story of three women and their confused but very human connectedness. Yet the story is a fairly simple one.

A granddaughter (Sage) gets pregnant and goes to her more liberal-minded, lesbian grandma (Elle) for help over her business-focused mother (Judy). Sage needs money for an abortion that she has scheduled at the end of the day.

The two women embark on a journey in Elle’s 1955 Dodge Royal Lancer (which was Lily Tomlin’s personal vehicle) to get the money. The journey they take is of remembrances of Elle’s life and the people whose lives she touched.

The movie is full of sharp wit delivered perfectly by the talented cast but the amazing Lily Tomlin steals the show. When I was first looking for movies to schedule for Pride month I wanted half of the movies to be centered on women. So I picked two films that offered entirely different takes on lesbians and the power of women. The first was Bound, a film I had seen a couple of times.

Wonkette Movie Night: Bound

The other was this film, and just like Rebecca I had never heard of it. I saw the cast, read the description and watched the trailer. A film starring Lily Tomlin as a lesbian, hippie, poet grandma who helps her granddaughter get an abortion; AND the cast is almost entirely women with Sam Elliott tacked on? Fuck yeah I’m in.

Granddaughter Sage has much to learn from her grandma and her mother, but of course they all end up learning from each other. What drives their need to overcome the anxieties and complexities that come from being in a family, the families we are born into and the families we choose?

You know me, hopeful and cup half full ziggy; I say it is love.

This is not to say there is not a lot of emotional baggage and psychological scars that comes with these relationships. Grandma does not shy away from these deeper issues, it packs a big story into a short time frame at just 79 minutes.

Spoiler alert.

Sam Elliott’s acting is such that you want to kick him in the nuts and yet you feel the pure emotional pain he is experiencing, you think of him portraying strong but kind figures and yet he is not that kind of character in this movie. It is an amazing reflection on his talent among the many performances in this incredibly well-acted film. I found the young Julia Garner’s (Sage) acting to be stunning, how she shifts between dealing with her grandma and interacting with her mom is perfection.

So I, like most of you, had never heard of this film but I am so glad I picked it. A quote from the film that stuck with me was when grandma Elle was explaining to granddaughter Sage why she had had relationships with men in the past.

Sage: So, you used to like men?

Elle: Oh, I always liked women, I just didn’t like myself.

And liking yourself is the usually the hardest thing to do.

I need to add this, Lily Tomlin is a total hero. For a woman to do what she has done in comedy requires incredible talent and courage. She has been with her partner Jane Wagner for 55 years. They officially married in 2013.

It was an incredible frame of mind that the society had that a woman couldn’t stand up and tell jokes because it was too powerful. To make an audience laugh meant you had control of them in some way.

Grandma stars Lily Tomlin, Julia Garner, Marcia Gay Harden, Judy Greer, Laverne Cox, and Sam Elliott. Directed by Paul Weitz.

Grandma is free with ads on Tubi. $3.99 in the usual places.

To make requests and see the movie lists and schedules go to WonkMovie.

The animated short is Alterous by Arwynn the Frog.

Next week’s Movie Night selection is the documentary Stonewall Uprising free on YouTube and PBS.

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