‘The G’: Tallinn Review

Dir/scr: Karl R. Hearne. Canada. 2023. 106mins

“I’m not a good person,” says pensioner Ann Hunter (a superb Dale Dickey) to her neighbour in the prison-like elder care facility in which she finds herself placed, against her will. “But I do have other qualities.” This turns out to be something of an understatement, in this blistering winter noir which sees Ann, aka The G (for Granny), exacting revenge on the slippery businessman who has become her legal guardian, assuming control over her life and her assets. But why stop there? Karl R Hearne’s enjoyable frost-bitten genre picture arms its badass pensioner protagonist to the teeth and sets her loose on a society that writes off its elders, treating them as either an inconvenience or a cash cow. It is a revenge movie on old age itself.

 A revenge movie on old age itself

It’s a change of tone for Dickey, whose most recent lead role was in Max Walker-Silverman’s wistful quasi-romance A Love Song. But this most versatile of character actors proves once again that she is one of the finest currently working and more than capable of carrying a movie. The film, a fictional story inspired by the attitudes of Hearne’s own grandmother, bears a thematic resemblance to I Care A Lot, which starred a shark-eyed Rosamund Pike as a crooked legal guardian who swindles old people out of their savings. The crucial difference is this story follows the pensioner victim of this shady legal loophole rather than the perpetrator. This is significant, given how few roles there are for older women, let alone ones which so emphatically tear down the conventions and assumptions about female ageing. As such, this could be a title of interest for distributors and streaming platforms looking for films that fill this gap in the market.

When we first meet vodka-swilling, chain-smoking Ann, she has recently been chucked out of her knitting circle for bad behaviour; this is not someone who is planning to go gently into that good night. Ann has an affectionate, if slightly abrasive relationship with her granddaughter Emma (Romane Denis) and she cares, in her own way, for her beloved, chronically ill husband Chip (Greg Ellwand). But you sense that there is very little love lost between Ann and the rest of the world.

Emma, adrift in her life, aspires to the grit and no-shits-given approach of The G. Inspired by Ann (her Granny by marriage, not by blood), Emma decides to step up to help The G reclaim her freedom and the money that has been syphoned from her. But Emma is out of her depth - whereas Ann already has things under control and, with one well-placed phone call on a borrowed mobile, unleashes a tidal wave of violence.

The music choices shift as the film progresses, with the maudlin strains of country and western replaced with a throbbing, electronic synth-heavy score – the musical heart of the movie hardens along with the central character. And Dickey is remarkable. The disgust and fury in her eyes when, for example, she stares at the ‘no smoking’ sign in the sterile little box of an apartment where she has been placed, could melt through metal. And although the character makes use of several guns and, memorably, a kitchen knife, Dickey’s most effective weapon is her voice – all honey and razor blades, with a deliberate pacing that makes everything she says sound like a threat, it is a voice that warms and chills at the same time.