The Holdovers review: Paul Giamatti rekindles his Sideways partnership in heartbreaking new Alexander Payne movie

For a director known for creating portraits of spiky men, Alexander Payne might be the gentlest filmmaker in Hollywood. His best films – About Schmidt, Sideways, Nebraska, The Descendants and now The Holdovers – are about people realising that life has passed them by, that their dreams never came true, that their well of hope has run dry and their best days are behind them. More importantly, though, they’re about coming to terms with all this and learning to appreciate whatever scraps of compassion and dignity happen to fall from the table.

The Holdovers follows Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti, rekindling his relationship with Payne two decades after Sideways forever besmirched the good name of Merlot), an ancient history teacher at a New England boarding school in the 1970s who has been in-post for so long he’s melted into the very fabric of the building, as invisible as the dusty portraits of long-dead headmasters that line the walls.

Hunhan is an awkward old chap. He has haemorrhoids, he smells like fish because of a defective enzyme, his sweaty hands are perpetually clammy, and Giamatti wears a disconcertingly realistic prosthetic to mimic his character’s glass eye. His students tease him for his physical shortcomings and hate him for his strict and abrasive manner. His colleagues tend to agree.

The film’s title refers to the handful of students who, for various reasons, are forced to “holdover” at the school during the Christmas holidays (January is a strange release date for what is essentially a Christmas movie). Hunham, as the least popular member of the faculty, is chosen to play reluctant babysitter to troubled student Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), with the recently bereaved kitchen manager Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) playing third wheel to this ill-matched duo. As the holidays drag on, the three open up about their private griefs, their secret shames, their dashed ambitions.

Like all of Payne’s work, The Holdovers combines its layers of pathos with a wicked sense of humour. Giamatti, always an accomplished comic actor, is on impeccable form, delivering his acerbic lines with dry wit and vaguely menacing gusto. “That kid was so dumb he couldn’t pour piss out of a boot,” he quips at one point, following it up shortly after with “Life is like a henhouse ladder: shitty and short”.

As well as exploring the fragility of the human condition, Payne is also a great chronicler of the American landscape. Sideways was a glorious tour through the golden light of California wine country; Descendants captured the rainswept, elegiac beauty of Hawaii; Nebraska featured the endless, dusty plains of the Midwest. The Holdovers, meanwhile, focuses on the icy, Christmas card landscape of New England, all frozen lakes and snowy fields. While it lacks some of the grandeur of his past cinematography, it’s a quietly stunning piece of work.

At its heart, the Holdovers is a poignant reminder that everyone has their problems, we all feel adrift in the world, and we should probably give each other more of a break. It’s a perfect message for a Christmas movie and one that hits just as hard during these cold January days.