SNAPSHOT
After the death of her mother, Doris, an isolated 60-year-old woman, becomes motivated by a self-help seminar to romantically pursue a younger coworker at a hip Brooklyn clothing company. As she finds ways to connect with John (going to an electronica concert, hanging out in hipster coffee shops..), her authentic retro style thrusts her into the spotlight of the local hipster social scene and she soon gets caught up in the world of chocolate bar haikus and rooftop knitting clubs. But her other relationships suffer as a result of her new found popularity and Doris has to realize that what she wants isn’t necessarily what she needs. (official synopsis via Slash Film)
Life is full of surprises, so they say.
But the reality how many surprises come your way depends largely on how open you are to receiving them when they appear.
All too often, it’s easy to slip into a rut, to put your head down and put one foot in front of the other, paying little heed to what’s ahead.
And then you can often miss out on amazing things, even when they’re staring you right in the face.
Doris is one of those people – caught in a groove she can’t escape, a passenger about her life, which keeps going on uneventfully with little in the way of challenge or excitement.
Then along comes John, and everything changes and as Joe Leydon from Variety something quite wonderful happens …
“Despite some bumpy tonal shifts and inconsistencies of characterization, Hello, My Name Is Doris impresses as a humanely amusing and occasionally poignant dramedy about a spinsterish office drone who develops a romantic fixation on a much younger co-worker. The plot could have been played as a flat-out broad comedy or an anxiety-inducing psychological drama, and there are times when it feels like helmer Michael Showalter is striving for a mash-up of both. But Sally Field keeps the movie on an even keel, for the most part, with an adroit and disciplined lead performance that generates both laughter and sympathy, with relatively few yanks on the heartstrings. Audiences of a certain age might respond warmly, provided they are stoked by savvy marketing and favorable word of mouth.”
Anyone who’s ever thought there must be more to life than this, who longs for a second chance, will be able to identify with Doris, who it seems discovers before it’s too late that life can be every bit as wonderful as she hoped it might be deep down.
Hello, My Name is Doris premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March 2015 and opens mainstream in USA on 11 March 2016.