At the age of ninety-three Manoel de Oliveira continues prodigiously to write and direct films, but his I’m Going Home appears to speak with a different voice. When the film begins, aging Gilbert Valence (played by Michel Piccoli) is offering yet another acclaimed performance on stage, the role of the king in Ionesco’s Exit the King. After the play ends, he is informed that his wife, daughter, and son-in-law have died in an automobile accident. How does an older man try to make a life as a widower whose only living relative is six-year-old grandson-in-law Serge (played by Jean Koeltgen), who has a nanny Guilhermine (played by Mauricette Gourdon) to take care of him? Quite simply, he never recovers from the shock. Nobody with whom he talks can ease the pain of the loss. For a while, he frequents his favorite café, wanders the streets of Paris (pausing a few times to sign autographs for fans), and shops for new clothes, but soon he is mugged. His agent tries to interest him in new parts, and he indeed plays Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. But his agent soon angers him, first by prying into his solitary personal life and then by offering him a sordid part in a sleazy play in which an older man is fleeced by a younger woman. Then he decides to live with his grandson, who is eager to show affection to his remaining relative, and they amuse each other playing games. One morning his agent calls him urgently, saying that there is an excellent opportunity. John Crawford (played by John Malkovitch), an American director, desperately needs a replacement for a small but important part, Buck Milligan, in an about-to-be-filmed movie based on James Joyce’s Ulysses because the actor cast for the role has suddenly fallen seriously ill. Accordingly, Valence quickly attempts to learn his English lines for the part and appears for the filming within three days. Valence, however, has some difficulty with the lines, and Crawford will not allow a reasonably equivalent set of words, so there are several retakes of a scene until, all of a sudden, Valence says, “I’m going home.” He then takes off his cloak, walks out of the studio, and joins his grandson to enjoy his golden years in a hassle-free environment with much reciprocated affection and good humor. The film says that good acting is pure enjoyment for an actor; but when the feeling goes, the simple pleasures of family life hopefully await. The relevance of the paradigm for many other situations is clear, and one parallel that seems obvious is with how Professor Immanuel Rath in The Blue Angel (1930) walked offstage one night with a shriek. However, the pace of the film is extraordinarily slow; much time consists of just observing the magnificent acting abilities of Michel Piccoli in two classic plays. MH