Mr. Morgan's Last Love (also known as Last Love) is a 2013 film based on Françoise Dorner's French novel La Douceur Assassine. It is written and directed by Sandra Nettelbeck and stars Michael Caine and Clémence Poésy.
Synopsis
The film centres around a retired, widowed professor (Caine) living in Paris who develops a special relationship with a young French woman (Poésy). That's the central structure for a sensitive story about changing relationships for this professor and his son, and life's meaning.
Cast
Michael Caine as Matthew Morgan
Clémence Poésy as Pauline Laubie
Justin Kirk as Miles Morgan
Jane Alexander as Joan Morgan
Gillian Anderson as Karen Morgan
Richard Hope as Philatelist
Anne Alvaro as Colette Léry
Louis-Julien Petit as Sleeping Student on Bus
Production
The film was shot in Paris, Brittany, Brussels and Cologne in August 2011.
The book's French protagonist Monsieur Armand was changed to American Mr. Morgan. Nettelbeck wrote the screenplay with Caine in mind.
Reception
Mr. Morgan's Last Love received mixed reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 31% rating, based on 39 reviews, with an average score of 4.67/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Last Love benefits from a typically strong Michael Caine performance, but it's ultimately too mawkish and dawdling to make much impact." Metacritic gives the film a score of 36 out of 100, sampled from thirteen reviews.
Peter Bradshaw, writing in The Guardian, called the film a "coy and unendurable tale of a tastefully sexless May-to-December romance".