The Company of Strangers

Deftly skirting the dangers of improvisation, this touching and gently humorous film maroons a group of septuagenarian women (and their younger black minder) in an isolated farmhouse, where they while away the time talking about their families, working lives and past loves, and their hopes and fears for an uncertain future. Simple scenes, like one in which a prissy woman is cajoled into removing her wig, or the realisation that one of the women (now deaf) will never again hear birdsong, are suffused with residual strength and intimations of mortality. The only false note is the carefully selected nature of the group (a Navajo woman, a nun, a lesbian, a wacky stroke-survivor), which undercuts the otherwise free-form structure.