How About You is one of three recent movies dealing with people spending the last years of their lives in residential homes, and all three were made by directors much younger than their principal characters: Away From Her (directed by Sarah Polley, 28), the imminent The Savages from Tamara Jenkins (45), and this film by Anthony Byrne, the 32-year-old Irish director of the stylised musical, Short Order.
Adapted by Jean Pasley from a Maeve Binchy short story (The Hardcore), How About You is set at Christmastime, when only four people remain in residence at Woodlands, a rural Irish home run by Kate (Orla Brady). Vanessa Redgrave, who had a cameo in Short Order, plays the feistiest of them, a professional singer and dancer who married an Irishman and spouts expletives one would not expect to find in a Binchy story.
Joss Ackland is cast as the most demanding guest, a retired high court judge and recovering alcoholic who snarls and delivers caustic put-downs. Completing the quartet are Brenda Fricker and Imelda Staunton as sisters who never married and devoted their lives to caring for their ailing mother.
When Kate's mother falls ill, she reluctantly leaves her younger sister, Ellie (Hayley Atwell), in charge of the guests. The cantankerous quartet realise too late that they have met their match in the spirited Ellie, and in the transformative events that follow, they finally recognise kindred spirits in each other and in their individual intimations of mortality.
Crucially, the casting of Byrne's nimbly directed film is astute and pays dividends, although Darragh Kelly is saddled with the thankless, underwritten role of a Department of Health inspector whose presence is merely jarring. Meanwhile, Atwell (from TV's The Line of Beauty) and Brady (who was unforgettable in A Love Divided) respond engagingly to the sisters they play.
Blending humanity and humour, the movie empathises with its aging characters at this stage in their long lives. The film belongs to the fine ensemble cast, and it would be invidious to single out any of them.
How About You marks the swansong for the late Joan O'Hara, who features in a warm, dignified performance as another resident. The film is dedicated to her.
