Sylvia (Brigitte Fossey) and Luc (Jean-Pierre Bacri), a successful yuppie couple take in Fred (Llewellyn Rees) and Rose (Odette Laure), an octogenarian husband and wife from the local couples' retirement home, currently under renovation. Immediately, however, Fred and Rose prove impossible to deal with and Sylvia and Luc find themselves regretting their good intentions.
"Old Folks at Home" is the perfect example of everything that's wrong with the French episodes of "Chillers". First of all, the dubbing is so appealing it made my skin crawl (in that sense, at least, the episode is chilling), but most importantly, screenwriter Gérard Brach and director Peter Kassovitz, somehow manage to miss the point of the tale.
The original short story is loaded with cynicism and is, in fact, a savage satire of bored, middle-class yuppie couples. While most of their friends buy expensive paintings or clothes to show off, Sylvia and Luc get themselves a poor, old couple. Their intentions are not kind or generous, they only took them in so they could brag to their friends how they're "so charitable". But it seems Highsmith's trademark irony and subtlety was missed by the filmmakers who interpret Sylvie and Luc's intentions as genuine and thus turn a bitingly satiric short story into a run-of-the-mill comedy about a lovely younger couple who take in a grotesquely over-the-top elderly couple. As such "Old Folks at Home" simply doesn't work. Unlike the previous episode "What the Cat Brought In", it fails to see or convey the humour of the piece and ends up becoming heavy-handed, drawn-out, and painfully unfunny.
"Old Folks at Home" is the perfect example of everything that's wrong with the French episodes of "Chillers". First of all, the dubbing is so appealing it made my skin crawl (in that sense, at least, the episode is chilling), but most importantly, screenwriter Gérard Brach and director Peter Kassovitz, somehow manage to miss the point of the tale.
The original short story is loaded with cynicism and is, in fact, a savage satire of bored, middle-class yuppie couples. While most of their friends buy expensive paintings or clothes to show off, Sylvia and Luc get themselves a poor, old couple. Their intentions are not kind or generous, they only took them in so they could brag to their friends how they're "so charitable". But it seems Highsmith's trademark irony and subtlety was missed by the filmmakers who interpret Sylvie and Luc's intentions as genuine and thus turn a bitingly satiric short story into a run-of-the-mill comedy about a lovely younger couple who take in a grotesquely over-the-top elderly couple. As such "Old Folks at Home" simply doesn't work. Unlike the previous episode "What the Cat Brought In", it fails to see or convey the humour of the piece and ends up becoming heavy-handed, drawn-out, and painfully unfunny.
