Bring Clifton Webb forward 60 years, add wackiness, and you have Kevin Kline as the eccentric bachelor in a rent-stabilized dump on the Upper East Side (yes, there are such flats still). His new roomie played by Paul Dano has a poignance, a sad yearning that I haven't seen conveyed so well since Timothy Bottoms in "Last Picture Show." Dano has the sort of face you only see nowadays looking at you across time in family pictures from a century ago or more. The face is ingenuous, pure. The kind of face that America just doesn't make anymore.
Both characters have built protective walls around themselves, perhaps necessarily. Though they fascinate each other, and unintentionally entertain each other, they can't decide whether or not to be real allies.
The older man depends on super-annuated ladies of wealth for his dining out and his winters in Florida. The younger man, though straight, enjoys wearing ladies lingerie while having sex. It can be all a bit depressing.But there's a soft landing, a nice ending to this opus all around.
