Camilla
John Masefield, “Sea Fever” When these words are spoken between Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn in “Camilla,” it is impossible to remain unmoved. Cronyn had been married for 52 years, and acting together longer than that. I do not know that “Camilla” was considered by its makers to be her last film, but of course everyone concerned would have known that she was in remission from a disease that would eventually claim her. There is the conscious sense, in scene after scene, that this film is her farewell.
Of course, like all veteran troupers, Miss Tandy gave more than one farewell performance. She also can be seen in “Nobody’s Fool,” as an old woman who was once Paul Newman’s grade school teacher and is now his landlady. In “Fried Green Tomatoes” (1991), she was an old lady in a nursing home, telling a remarkable story from her youth. In “Cocoon” (1985) and its sequel (1988), she and Cronyn played an old couple offered the gift of youth, which she eventually rejected. The late performance she will be best remembered for, of course, is in “Driving Miss Daisy” (1989), for which she won the Oscar as best actress.
These performances, taken together, show an elderly woman of great dignity and strength, stubbornness and eventual warmth. What “Camilla” adds to the palate is humor and some naughtiness: Who but Tandy would appear, in her mid-80s, in a skinny- dipping scene? (Her spirit, if it looks down, must be vastly amused that the scene helped win the movie an MPAA warning about “discreet nudity.”) “Camilla” is worth seeing because of Tandy and Cronyn, and because of a fine performance by Bridget Fonda, but it is not, unfortunately, a very good film. Continue reading “When Miss Tandy died last autumn, she and Mr”