Director Bob Balaban's third feature film signals no sort of "growth" in his career, but instead a switch to a totally different branch, a less twisted one, a more widely reachable one, an altogether lower one. Perhaps counting himself lucky to be still working at all, the man who made Parents and My Boyfriend's Back is nowhere to be found in the gemütlich tale of an Old World pensioner -- a heart-on-sleeve violinist and an avid reader of the Western philosophers -- who gives shelter, medical care, and frozen TV dinners to a battered twenty-two-year-old on the dodge from her shady boyfriend. The quarters are close; the bath towel eventually drops; a May-December thing happens. There's nothing kinky about it; it's all very sweet. If the director were, say, an Arthur Hiller, it might even mark some sort of career pinnacle in restraint, tact, sensitivity. The trouble with it is that we can all too readily imagine the director being an Arthur Hiller. Armin Mueller-Stahl, Olivia d'Abo, Maureen Stapleton, Lionel Stander. (1995) — Duncan Shepherd
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