Last Love Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		5.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.5

Last Love Blu-ray Movie Review

Letting in the Light

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 22, 2013

Sir Michael Caine turned eighty years old in 2013. With two Academy Awards and a lengthy résumé studded with prestige projects (and a few embarrassments), most people would be slowing down, but Caine has done the opposite. In addition to remaining a member of director Christopher Nolan's stock company (their latest project, Interstellar, is in post-production) and contributing voice work to animation (e.g., Gnomeo & Juliet), Caine keeps taking tricky roles that explore various aspects of a subject that mainstream films have all but abandoned and that most actors try to avoid even acknowledging: old age. Reportedly an outgoing and fun-loving individual who has never had any trouble enjoying success, Caine seems especially drawn to characters of the opposite temperament: men who dislike the world they see around them, like the retired soldier in Harry Brown, or who regret the life they have lived, like Clarence the guilt-ridden magician in Is Anybody There?, or those who wonder why they're still alive, like Matthew Morgan in Last Love.

Originally titled "Mr. Morgan's Last Love", Last Love was written and directed by German filmmaker Sandra Nettelbeck, best known in the U.S. for 2001's romantic drama Mostly Martha, which was remade in English as No Reservations (2007). Nettelbeck adapted a French novel entitled La Douceur Assassine by Françoise Dorner, but she wrote the screenplay expressly for Caine, which meant that the lead character could no longer be French. Still, instead of making Mr. Morgan English, she made him American and built in a running joke about how he had lived in Paris for years but never bothered to learn the language. The lack of communication increased Mr. Morgan's sense of isolation.

Last Love was poorly reviewed during its brief theatrical run in America. Although the quality of Caine's performance was generally acknowledged, the film itself was dismissed as sentimental. Then again, Last Love is a film where one's reaction is particularly dependant on one's situation in life. Nettelbeck creates a rich atmosphere, but she leaves much to be inferred, and Last Love undoubtedly speaks differently to older viewers than to those who are the age of Matthew Morgan's adult children. Indeed, when we meet Matthew Morgan, he is barely connected to this world and already living "on the other side" with his late wife, of whom he cannot let go. But something prompts Matthew to return to this world and deal with unfinished business, while he still can. The provocateur of this new attitude is a young woman with her own reasons for feeling adrift, and the connection between her and Matthew is the mystery at the core of the film.

Matthew Morgan (Caine) retired from his position as a professor of philosophy at Princeton and relocated to Paris, where he and his wife, Joan (Jane Alexander), acquired a spacious apartment and spent summers at a house in the country that Joan inherited from her family. Although it is never said directly, it is clear that France was Joan's passion, and Matthew accommodated her. The film opens with Joan's death, after a long illness. Three years later, Matthew is still going through the motions of daily life, but the only reason he can bear the daily routine is because he still sees and hears Joan walking beside him. A housekeeper, Madame Dune (Michelle Goddet), looks after the apartment, and Matthew has lunch once a week with Colette (Anne Alvaro), a long-time acquaintance whose English he corrects. He himself has never learned French, because Joan did all the talking with the locals.

Matthew seems simply to be waiting for his own physical death, but something else arrives in the unexpected form of a young Frenchwoman named Pauline (Clémence Poésy, who played Fleur Delacour in the Harry Potter series). They meet when she helps him regain his footing on a bus, and each recognizes something strangely familiar in the other. The relationship that develops between them, in halting fits and starts, isn't romantic so much as familial, in the sense that people sometimes create a family-like bond with others when they've been disappointed in (or lost) their blood relations.

But is there more to it in this case? Midway through Last Love, Pauline is shocked to discover that Matthew has two adult children he's never mentioned. Miles (Justin Kirk) and Karen (Gillian Anderson) fly to Paris from their homes in the U.S. in response to a health crisis that quickly passes. The two are a study in contrasts. Karen is upbeat and brisk; she urges her father to return to the States, and when he declines, she takes it in stride, shops up a storm and catches a flight back to her husband and children. Miles, on the other hand, is facing his own life crises, and he still needs something from his father, though he isn't sure what. He's deeply suspicious of Pauline, who he assumes is a standard-issue gold digger.

As for Matthew, the appearance of his children forces him to confess to Pauline all the failures he's tried to ignore, and a few that he can't forget. Ironically, though, it is the collision among Matthew, Pauline and Matthew's children, especially Miles, that ultimately reveals to Matthew the nature of his life's unfinished work. Last Love has the geometric and inexorable logic of a fairy tale, and there are stylistic signs throughout the film that its director intended it to be experienced that way. Seldom has anyone moved through the bustling streets and parks of Paris with such a sense of quiet and isolation. In Nettelbeck's frame, the City of Lights becomes an enchanted wood, sometimes forbidding, sometimes benevolent, where Matthew Morgan must wander until he solves the riddle of what his life has been about. Only then is he able to rest.

Last Love Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Last Love was shot on film by Nettelbeck's usual cinematographer, Michael Berti. The credits indicate "digital grading", which is common European terminology for a digital intermediate. Certainly the precise shifts in color temperatures observable throughout the film would be difficult to achieve with such consistency by traditional photochemical means.

Image/RLJ Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is one of the most impressive achievements I have seen from the studio to date. The image is gorgeously detailed and delicately colored, so that all of the fine backgrounds in Matthew Morgan's spacious apartment can be readily discerned, along with the clutter in Pauline's apartment, the decor in various restaurants, the trees in parks, the leaves on the ground and the colorful countryside when Matthew and Pauline visit Matthew's house. The palette has been carefully managed to remove all the warmth from early scenes, before Matthew meets Pauline, so that Paris looks cold and forbidding, even at its most beautiful, but earth tones seep back in as the relationship develops. The interplay of light and shadow is painterly and elegant throughout.

The film's grain pattern is natural, fine and undisturbed by inappropriate digital manipulation. In a departure from their usual practice, Image has placed the film on a BD-50, allowing for a staggeringly high average bitrate of 37.45 Mbps. Never let it be said that the additional bandwidth isn't worth it.

Last Love Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Although Last Love is a dialogue-driven film, the lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack provides a subtle sense of ambiance for the various environments where the film takes place. It is particularly effective in the dance studio where Pauline teaches the cha-cha to an enthusiastic crowd of students, young and old. The dialogue is always clear, and some (but not all) of the incidental French dialogue is translated by English subtitles. Hans Zimmer, who is best known for his heavy-duty action movie scores, has supplied something much more delicate and restrained for Last Love, and it suits the film beautifully.

Note that, although Spanish subtitles are listed on the back of the Blu-ray case, none are included. The only available subtitles are English SDH.

Last Love Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 1.85:1; 16:06): Some of these scenes provide additional character background. They were probably cut for pacing. The scenes are not separately selectable, but they are identified by intertitles, which are listed below:
• Scene 1: Joan's death
• Scene 7: Have you spoken to Miles lately?
• Scene 21: Joan's favorite tie
• Scene 24: The bats
• Scene 27: Hello! It's me!
• Scene 31: Home alone
• Scene 32: Will you marry me?
• Scene 33: A funeral
• Scene 68: Will you have lunch with me on Sunday?
• Scene 59: Going out
• Scene 64: Where the hell did you park?
• Scene 71: It was a car accident
• Scene 77: Your favorite tie is ruined
• Scene 99: You really want to eat?
• Scene 125: I have met quite a few men in my life
• Scene 130/131: Miles finds Matt's letter
• Scene 150: I knew we were meant for each other



• Outtakes (1080p; 1.85:1; 9:37): For a film of this sort to have what amounts to a "gag reel" seems odd, but clearly the cast needed to break the tension.



• Trailers: The film's trailer is not included. At startup, the disc plays trailers for Blood and Day of the Falcon, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Last Love Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As tidy as Last Love's resolution may appear to be on the surface, it leaves plenty of loose ends and unanswered questions. Pauline suggests to Matthew at one point that the moment you figure out your whole life is the moment you die. The ending of Last Love strongly suggests that Matthew has indeed finally figured out his entire life, but it's an understanding of which only he can take full advantage. Others have the same task before them, and all he can do is offer pointers. Last Love appears "sentimental" to the extent one takes it as offering easy answers, but to me there was nothing easy in the film's resolution. It struck me more as a gauntlet thrown down. As with all such matters, your mileage may vary, but the Blu-ray is technically superb.