The Holdovers — a Christmas Film for Adults

Alexander Payne has always worked best in a melancholic-warm register, and The Holdovers lands squarely in his zone. Paul Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a cranky, widely-loathed classics teacher at a New England boarding school, stuck babysitting the students who have nowhere to go for Christmas 1970. Da'Vine Joy Randolph plays Mary Lamb, the school's grieving cook. Newcomer Dominic Sessa plays Angus Tully, a troubled kid who stays behind.

The three of them learn to tolerate each other over three weeks. Payne is not in a hurry. Randolph, in particular, carries a grief that the film refuses to reduce to a subplot.

What saves The Holdovers from being a Hallmark movie with a slightly higher budget is its unblinking attention to the small ways people can be kind to each other without announcing it. The film knows exactly what it is. It is a gift.

Playing at Cineplex Yonge-Dundas, Imagine Orleans, Cineplex Cinemas Fairview Mall, Landmark Grande Prairie.