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.
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.
Prefer a non-Substack subscription? The button below will take any amount of your choosing at PayPal — let me know if you want the newsletter subscription too! PayPal won’t automatically sign you up for the newsletter! — or we have a Patreon too.
Today I rode Xena Warrior Scooter to the supermarket and locked up on the bike rack. I did my shopping and came out to find a full size scooter(think Vespa) totally blocking me in. Of course I cursed this person loudly as 'What a DICK!"
Well the DICK was exiting the supermarket about ten steps behind me.
He immediately stepped up and apologized for blocking me in.
Then a young dude rode up, dumped his bike next to the rack, which blocked the sidewalk and went in the store, and that pissed scooter dude off.
Scooter dude told me he was tempted to pick up the bike and drop it in a dumpster, but i said there was maybe a better way to handle it.
Instead he picked the bike up and leaned it against the rack, unblocking the sidewalk.
Then we both wished each other save travels home before it started raining.
𝐁𝐎𝐍𝐔𝐒 𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐀:
The car that Elle (Lily Tomlin) and Sage (Julia Garner) drive for much of the movie was a 1955 Dodge Royal that is owned by Lily Tomlin. Tomlin told USA Today that she bought it in 1975 for fifteen hundred dollars. She said, "It's not a prize car. It's not a car that people yearn for. But it has a nice look to it. The car is almost a character in the movie. I knew I kept that car for a reason."