Park Avenue

“Charlotte” (Katherine Waterston) has had enough of her Canadian ranching life with her husband, and despite the fact that he just has shut down her bank accounts, makes it to New York where her widowed mother “Kit” (Fiona Shaw) has lived in an elegant Park Avenue apartment since she was a child. Her arrival is somewhat unexpected and though her mum is happy enough to see her, it’s clear fairly swiftly that their relationship is a complex and fairly unconventional one. Choosing to live from the maid’s room, she reconnects with “Anders” (Chaske Spencer), a childhood friend who is now the building’s doorman and as that relationship begins to compensate for what is missing elsewhere in her life, we discover that her mother has a battle of her own on her hands, one that she chooses not to read “Charlotte” into. As these two women gradually start to become re-accustomed to each other, the film takes us on a gentle observation of their respective searches for fulfilment, peace and truth. The emotional intensity of the drama is peppered with some lovely sarcasm from Shaw and with some lightly comedic antics in a building where the elderly residents are dwindling at quite a pronounced rate. I thought that Shaw brought something of a flamboyant Norma Desmond to her role that I quite enjoyed, and she and Waterston spar amiably as we head to a denouement that we expect, but that plays out a bit more spiritually than it might have. It’s a slow burn with the emphasis on some quite potent writing, two engaging performances and some fairly ugly looking face masks. You don’t need to see it in a cinema, but it is a worthwhile character study, nicely scored, and worth a watch on the telly,