Alexander Payne's 'The Holdovers' Offers a Bittersweet Blast From the Past 

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• Courtesy Of Seacia Pavao/Focus Features
• Paul Giamatti plays a prep school teacher forced to spend the holidays with a recalcitrant student in Alexander Payne's retro comedy-drama.

Two-time Oscar-winning director Alexander Payne (Election, The Descendants) hasn't had a critical hit since 2013's Nebraska — until now. The Holdovers, a gently comic period piece that reunites him with Sideways star Paul Giamatti, was the runner-up for the People's Choice Award at September's Toronto International Film Festival and is likely to be a player at awards season. See it at the Savoy Theater, Majestic 10 or Merrill's Roxy Cinemas.

The deal

It's 1970, and the winter break approaches at Barton Academy, a New England boys' boarding school. Every year, one unlucky teacher must stay on campus with the kids who have nowhere else to go for the holidays. This year it's Paul Hunham (Giamatti), a single, middle-aged classics nerd so determined to uphold academic standards that he made the mistake of flunking a major donor's son. The students call him "Walleye," and not in an affectionate way. He calls them "reprobates" and "troglodytes."

One of those reprobates is Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), a smart kid with a smart mouth who likes to give Paul a hard time. When Angus' mom's honeymoon gets in the way of his vacation plans, he finds himself trapped on campus with his least favorite teacher.

Also a "holdover" is cafeteria director Mary Lamb (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), who is mourning the death of her son, a promising Barton graduate, in the Vietnam War. She's one of the few people with whom Paul lets down his guard, the two of them bonding over the solace they find in a glass of whiskey.

As the dreary days of winter wear on, under Mary's influence the disciplinarian teacher and the rebellious student begin to realize they might have a few things in common.

Will you like it?

Many films play on our nostalgia. But The Holdovers made me feel as if I really were transported back to the 1970s, when movies played in double features on gigantic screens and stories unfolded in their own sweet time. For older viewers, the vintage blue-and-white R-rating card that opens the movie serves the same function as Marcel Proust's memory-summoning madeleine.

The drab, wintry setting palpably recalls the unglamorous realism of filmmakers such as Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude); you can almost hear the tick of Barton Academy's tetchy radiators. Even Payne's cornier camera moves — such as a fast zoom out to show us Angus has flown the coop — feel impeccably '70s.

The thing about that era of movies, though, is that even when they get corny, they rarely get too corny, maintaining just enough wry, European-style distance from their characters to keep the audience from feeling manipulated. In this way, too, Payne follows his models. And that bit of distance is the movie's saving grace, because the script, by TV writer David Hemingson, is not short on clichés.

From the moment we meet the frenetically pompous Paul and hear him spew a Latin quote (the first of many), we know the movie is going to be about him loosening up and learning to relate to the youth. And the instant we meet Angus, with his callow arrogance and the giant chip on his shoulder, we know he will have to confront some grief in his backstory, just like Holden Caulfield. These two broken men will help each other heal — with the assistance of Mary, who's also broken but emotionally intelligent enough to kick-start her own healing. For all of them, the new year will be a renewal.

In short, what we have in The Holdovers is the kind of holiday drama about lonely people that makes Oscar voters feel warm and fuzzy (think Green Book or The Whale), laced through with humor that vacillates between subtlety and broadness. But those veins of subtlety save it.

Even when the script is hammering home its points, the performances keep the characters multidimensional. Sessa dares to be unlikable, giving Angus a believably chaotic adolescent energy. Randolph's dry wit anchors the story. Carrie Preston is both sweet and tart as a school secretary who's kind to Paul.

Giamatti's portrayal of a clueless academic is initially so over the top that it's reminiscent of the actor's comic turns in terrible blockbusters. But as Paul warms up to Angus and starts treating him like a person rather than a pupil, his own humanity shines through. Giamatti does wonders with a brief, biting monologue in which Paul sums up the chaos of the era, revealing that he isn't actually clueless so much as hopeless, clinging to his classics as a bulwark against a turbulent world.

Predictable as The Holdovers is, Payne isn't afraid to dwell on the bittersweet side of nostalgia, and he refuses to parcel out happy endings. Come for the sentimental evocation of bygone times; stay for the bracing reminder that the past wasn't actually that great.

If you like this, try...

Sideways (2004; rentable): Giamatti became a star among character actors after his turn as a finicky, down-on-his-luck oenophile in Payne's award-studded drama set in California's wine country — a role spiritually akin to that of Paul.

If.... (1968; rentable): There's no shortage of movies involving boarding school, from the sappy (ahem, Dead Poets Society) to the sublime (Rushmore). But for a blast of the revolutionary spirit of the era when The Holdovers is set, try this British relic in which Malcolm McDowell plays a student leading a violent rebellion.

The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015; Kanopy, Max, rentable): Or, if you're fascinated by the creepiness of an abandoned campus, watch this arty horror movie set during a winter break at boarding school.