Long after many another serviceable movie premise has gone to its grave, the brief encounter will live and be well.
Talk about an unbeatable package: Nothing more urgently captures the disappointment of lives congealed by routine than does the sudden midlife romance; nothing so pointedly speaks to the undying desire for completion by another who understands and accepts us as no one else does; nothing so completely resounds with the fantasy of escape. And nothing so neatly contains all that unruly desire within the 11th-hour return to common sense and responsible self-sacrifice.
At Middleton, a deft little bonbon squirreled away in the dumping ground of January releases, is not the first to frame this premise in the watershed moment of departure for college. Like The Kids Are All Right, Admission and last year’s Enough Said, the movie brings renewed life and libido, with all the attendant pleasures and dangers, to two unhappy middle-aged strangers.
On paper, George (Andy Garcia) and Edith (Vera Farmiga) seem unlikely to mesh. He’s a cardiac surgeon and bona fide stiff, all tan chinos and bow tie; she’s a free spirit with a tongue pickled in vinegar.
What they share, though, is that old change-of-life panic, plus the growing recognition that they have lost touch with the offspring each has brought to tour the kind of sun-dappled liberal arts campus that lends itself to creative release.