boarding school

The Holdovers (2023)

/ swampflix / 5 Comments

Every year, I get into a discussion with at least one person about the fact that I don’t much care for Christmas music. There are a lot of reasons for this. For one thing, I grew up in a household in which we were only allowed to listen to one radio station, one that was Contemporary Christian music 10.5 months of the year and nothing but the same 30-40 Christmas songs in the six weeks leading up to Christmas. It wasn’t as if you were going to hear anything tongue-in-cheek on 92.7 “The Bridge,” which means no “Santa Baby,” no Chipmunks, no mothers kissing Santa Claus or grandmothers getting run over by reindeer; you might get something haunting and ethereal that you wouldn’t get on a mainstream station like Amy Grant’s “Breath of Heaven” to almost make up for the dearth of otherwise worthwhile material, but that was about it. Add in that they didn’t even have more than one version of the standards that they did have, and it was a monotonous time. Secondly, I often find that people who have positive associations with Christmas have never had a job working retail, which means that they’ve never heard the same unimaginative version of “Little Drummer Boy” six times while manning an eight-hour shift at the cash register at Urban Outfitters (or worse, the Nook nook at Barnes & Noble, where you attempt to convince people who just came in to get a copy of Green Eggs and Ham for their niece to buy a less-functional iPad at the same price point), which will kill any fondness you might have had for a song. Still, every year, my best friend and I watch The Muppet Christmas Carol, and it’s part of our tradition that sometime during “It Feels Like Christmas” I turn to her and say “Y’know, I think this is my favorite Christmas carol. Not my favorite Christmas Carol adaptation, but like my favorite Christmas song,” and she says “Y’know, you say that every year.” That film came out allllll the way back in 1992, and although there have been a few other Christmas movies that have come out since whose appeal was universal (Elf), blandly inoffensive in a corporate way (The Santa Clause), or bizarre (Krampus) enough to be considered part of the Christmas Movie Canon (at least to some), they are few and far between. We may have a new one with The Holdovers, though. 

It’s almost Christmas, 1970, at the New England boarding school Barton Academy. Junior Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) is excited to spend his winter break in Saint Kitts with his family, even packing up a pair of beach briefs that he describes as the most masculine thing that he could wear, as they’re the same as the ones James Bond wore in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. On the last (half) day of the term, the strict and authoritarian ancient civilizations professor Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) “generously” offers to let one of his classes, comprised mostly of boys who have failed the midyear exam, to take a retest upon their return, although there will be new material on that test, which means more studying during their vacation. Both of their Christmas plans are derailed, however. When one of his peers fakes a relative’s illness to get out of chaperoning the “holdovers” (boys who will be staying at the school rather than returning to their parents for the holidays), Hunham is enlisted to perform these duties, and he is all but told outright by the school’s headmaster Dr. Woodrip (Andrew Garman) that this is in retaliation for his refusal to give a passing grade to the son of a senator, costing Barton one of its largest donors. While waiting for his pickup, Tully receives a phone call from his mother, canceling their family trip at the last minute so that she can spend this time as a late honeymoon with the boy’s new stepfather, thus leaving him as one of the aforementioned holdovers, all of whom will be bunking in the infirmary as the dorms and school building will be without heat for the duration, for cost-saving reasons. The only other person who will be around consistently is Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), the cafeteria manager, who is hesitant to leave the last place that she spent time with her late son Curtis, who was recently killed in action in Vietnam. 

Although there are initially five students at Barton for Christmas, that number is whittled down to just Angus when one of the other boys’ father, a mogul of some kind, comes to collect his son for a ski trip and takes the other boys along, with Angus’s mother being unreachable on her vacation in order to give permission for him to go. When Angus injures himself while leading Paul on a chase around the school building, he is taken to the hospital, where he lies to cover for Paul and prevent the older man from losing his job, although he says he will call on the return of an equivalent favor one day. While eating in town on the way back, they encounter Lydia (Carrie Preston), Dr. Woodrip’s assistant, who tells them that she picks up a few shifts waiting tables over the holidays every year, and invites them to her Christmas party. They take her up on her offer and attend the party along with Mary, and while Angus hits it off with Lydia’s niece, Paul falls into the trap of being optimistic about Lydia’s potential to be attracted to him only to discover she has a boyfriend, and Mary drinks too much and has a breakdown about the loss of her son in the house’s kitchen. She’s not too drunk to tell Paul off about how he’s treating Angus. This eventually leads to the two taking a field trip into Boston after Christmas, but one of the stops they make along the way ends up having consequences that neither of them could have predicted. 

Paul Hunham is a fascinating character. We’re not meant to like him very much at first, and I think that he’s off-putting in that he represents the version of ourselves that we fear others see: unattractive, smelly, clumsy, incapable of telling a story. Our sympathy for him grows, however, as the pieces of his life fall into place as he and Angus get to know one another and open up to each other more: abusive father, scholarship to Barton Academy at age fifteen, went on to an Ivy League school where his more privileged roommate deflected his own plagiarism by framing Paul and Paul’s subsequent retaliation costing him his education. He returned to Barton, where he was given a position by a kindly former headmaster who saw his potential, only to now be serving at the leisure of a man who was once his own pupil. His backstory also intertwines with Mary’s, as she reveals that although Curtis likewise was able to attend Barton on scholarship, but upon graduation, he wasn’t able to go straight into university like his rich classmates and enlisted in the service in order to attend school on the G.I. Bill when he returned — but he didn’t come back. Along with Angus, who didn’t grow up in wealth and is only in attendance at Barton because his mother’s new husband is wealthy, they are the outsiders amongst the elite. In contrast, school’s effortlessly charming quarterback is initially left at the school by his father because the boy refuses to cut his long blond 1970s hair, but when he hears the helicopter approaching the school, he exclaims that he knew his father would break first, and he returns to school after break with a shorn head. Unlike the tragedies of the lives of our three leads, his troubles are shallow and silly, as his father’s feud was over nothing more than vanity and was resolved with no real loss since the boy was being stubborn about his hair because, in a world where you really have no other problems, what else are you going to fight about? 

If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself, “Wait, didn’t I hear that this movie was a comedy?” you are correct, it is; it’s just my nature to get hung up on the melancholy parts of these kinds of dramedies. Now that it’s addressed, it’s worth noting that this movie is, in fact, hilarious. Sessa is fantastic, a breakout freshman performance from an unknown actor who just happened to audition for the movie because he attended the school at which it was being filmed. There’s a scene late in the film when Paul is sitting at a bowling alley bar and he attempts to talk to two of the Bostonians there, a bartender and a regular dressed as Santa. He attempts to ingratiate himself with them by delivering a rambling monologue about how Santa should be dressed according to Grecian tradition, and although it’s exactly the kind of thing that would be very annoying behavior from a stranger at the bar, Giamatti plays it with the perfect intermix of attempted frivolity and joviality with witless, unobservant boorishness that it’s impossible not to be charmed by it in spite of oneself. Sessa manages to do the same with Angus, making him a triumphant example of a kid who’s too smart for his own good but is also struggling with rejection from his peers and his lack of friends in spite of his good nature underneath. It’s a very charming form of humor, and it works just as well as all of the great physical comedy that is going on around it (special mention to Paul Hunham’s absolutely pathetic attempt to throw a football). 

We throw the phrase “instant classic” around a lot these days. I’ve said it myself about things that didn’t stand the test of time and which have faded into obscurity. I don’t know if we’ll be able to look back on this one in ten years and say that it’s part of the canon, but I do know that I’ll be watching it one year from now, and that’s good enough for me.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

The Hairy Bird (1998)

/ swampflix / 1 Comment

In 1998, Miramax swept one of its finest films under the rug, plopping it in theaters like an unwanted runny egg with no promotion, then shuffling it off to home video. Director Sarah Kernochan, who was one of the co-directors of Marjoe among many other accolades, has laid the blame for this at the feet of none other than infamous sex pest Harvey Weinstein. It appears that, although he promised her distribution to at least 2000 screens, Weinstein recanted when Kernochan refused to hand over editorial control so that he could turn the film into something less like The Trouble with Angels-meets-The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys and more like a distaff Porky’s, with a broader appeal to a more mainstream (read: male) audience. As a result, a true classic has largely fallen through the cracks, not helped by the fact that it’s had three different titles: the original The Hairy Bird (which was rejected as it’s a slang reference to a phallus), then the generically nondescript All I Wanna Do for release in some regions, and the spoilery title Strike! in others. It’s out there, though, and if you can find it, it’s worth digging into. 

It’s 1963, and Odette “Odie” Sinclair (Gaby Hoffman) has been packed off to board at Miss Godard’s Preparatory School for Girls following her mother’s discovery of her diaphragm, to get her as far away from her boyfriend, Dennis (Matt Lawrence), as possible. Upon arrival, she is given a tour of the place by Abby Sawyer (Rachel Leigh Cook), an uptight legacy student who’s parlayed that status into a student leader position that allows her to act as militaristic hall monitor of other students. Odie is placed into a room with Verena von Stefan (Kirsten Dunst) and Tinka Parker (Monica Keena), the school’s foremost shit-stirrers who mockingly insert vulgarities into the school song as the students sing before dinner, smoke cigarettes on the school grounds, and (accurately) call Abby a fascist to her face. They induct Odie into their group, which also includes bulimic aspiring psychologist Tweety Goldberg (Heather Matarazzo) and science-inclined Maureen Haines (Merritt Weaver), and show her their secret hideout in a disused attic room that is accessible only through the ceiling of a linen closet. This secret clubhouse also allows them access to the school kitchen and its many canned goods, leading them to dub themselves the Daughters of the American Ravioli. Each is ambitious in her own way, declaring their intention to reject society’s intention to turn them into cookie-cutter wives and mothers with the motto “No more white gloves.” 

The first half of the film is largely made up of your standard mid-century boarding school hijinx. The girls sneak around and smoke, talk about their hopes and dreams, attempt to get a lecherous teacher fired through an elaborate hoax that involves a fake care package, and learn from each other. One of the major elevating factors in the movie is the presence of Lynn Redgrave in the role of headmistress Miss McVane. She’s amazing and powerful here as a stern but insightful and warm mentor figure who doles out advice to Odie when the girl first has friction with her roommates and peers. “Don’t reject them,” McVane tells her. “They’re not ‘just girls.’ They’re you. If you get to know them, you’ll be discovering yourself.” She’s right, too, and it’s amazing to watch just how much these characters bond, quickly but profoundly, with the distraction of boys completely removed from the equation, even if they’re never far from the girls’ minds (especially not Odie’s). The girls hatch a plan to get her off campus to one of their houses for a weekend so that she and Dennis can see each other, but when this plan is ruined, Odie ends up confined to campus for the remainder of the year. Discussion is made of finding a way to get Dennis on campus and into the attic room so that Odie can meet him there, but everything changes when Tweety overhears that the school is in such dire financial straits that the board is forcing the school to merge with nearby boys’ school St. Ambrose Academy. 

The girls’ fellowship is broken over different reactions to the news. Verena is incensed at the idea of losing what little space there is in the world that isn’t overrun by men and delivers a rampaging speech about how being forced to start worrying about primping and preening instead of studying and learning will have a net negative effect on all of them, and Maureen is distraught about how applying to MIT as one of eight students from St. Ambrose instead of as the only applicant from Miss Godard’s will dilute her chances of matriculating there, even before getting into how being absorbed by a school with a more middling academic reputation will bring down the perception of her education. The other girls, in particular the boy-crazy Tinka, are more excited by the prospect of going co-ed and the resultant opportunities for sexual gratification. Tensions run high following this schism, and they come to a head when a busload of St. Ambrose students arrive at Miss Godard’s for an introductory dance and choir concert. Verena and Maureen have a plan to make the students of St. Ambrose look bad, and the other girls realize Verena may be right when Tweety is taken advantage of by a boy who tricks her into exposing herself for a photograph. This puts Tinka on the warpath, and soon all of the girls are united in their effort to do anything they can to prevent the schools from merging. 

The resultant payoff to these plans is exactly the kind of thing that would, in any other movie, act as the climax of the film and save the school, but it’s not so simple. Although they are able to frame and/or expose (depending on the nature of the boy in question) the students of St. Ambrose as drunks and creeps, everything is covered up by the boards of both schools. Verena is expelled for her role in the plan, leading to the conversation in which she and the audience learn that she failed and that the school(s) will be going forward with co-education. As McVane explains it, it’s not “the first time women have had to marry for money,” delivering a wonderful speech about how the alumni have forsaken the school because they don’t see the use in investing in the futures of other women. “The men give generously to their schools. It’s a solid investment. They are ensuring that a steady supply of the nation’s leaders will be men.” She extols Verena, in a final impassioned plea to keep the faith: “After the men plant their flag in this school, they’ll bury us. It will be subtle and insidious, as in real life. Now, I may be at the end of the road here, but you’re young, you have the talent and power to lead; don’t stop the fight.” It may seem like it’s sitting there limply on the page, but this is powerful stuff in Redgrave’s hands, and she milks it for everything that it’s worth, and it is glorious.

The young cast is great as well. In addition to the above-mentioned students at Miss Godard’s, there’s a recurring character named Snake (Vincent Kartheiser) who leads a gang of local beatniks who are all named after common roadkill animals, and the St. Ambrose boy that Verena attempts to frame is played by Vincent Kartheiser, best known as Smalls from The Sandlot. Other boys from the academy include a pre-Animorphs Shawn Ashmore, a pre-Star Wars Hayden Christensen, and Robin Dunne, who you’re bound to recognize from something (and who has been in no fewer than nine movies with “Christmas” in the title). One of Snake’s hoodlums is also Zachary Bennett, the future star of Cube Zero, which may be of interest to longtime Swampflix fans. This is a stacked cast, and it’s a shame that dick-wagging has pushed it out of the public eye for so long. There’s not a bad performance in the bunch. It’s telling that, for all the clout that he amassed during his reign of terror, Weinstein couldn’t see what was so special about this movie and what quintessential magic that the film has would have been lost if he had gotten his way; he wanted to “sex up” the narrative, not realizing that this movie already is sexual, it simply handles its topic with great care. This is a movie about a group of young women who are fully in control of their sexuality. They’re not “desexualized,” but they don’t exist for the male gaze at all, and that’s likely why no one had any faith in it. Regardless, this is an undisputed classic in my opinion, and deserves to be tracked down. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond