Helen Mirren and the happiness of traveling.
"This is heaven?", John (Donald Sutherland) asks his wife Ella (Helen Mirren) as they near the end of their journey, Key West, the tip of the Florida Keys, the last island connected by road to the mainland, a moviegoer's paradise of palm trees, white sand and waters that blend with the sky because they are a perfect mirror of its low clouds.
"Perhaps," Ella replies. "And do you think you can get a hamburger up here?" he asks again. A conversation in which we would all recognize each other.
She and John in their private heaven.
She and John, or Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland, are the protagonists of The trip of their lives. a new turn to the old subgenre 'two for the road' that we like so much. From Thelma & Louise to, yeah Two on the road. And, as in many of these films, the journey that John and Ella undertake is one of absolute happiness and some bitterness. It is a trip across the United States to Florida to reach the house that his hero had in Key West, Ernest Hemingway.
The film is based on Michael Zadoorian's book The Leisure Seeker, the English title and name of the tartan caravan the couple drives. The seeker of free time, of tranquility.
While in the novel the road trip is from Detroit to Disneyland (more similar to the famous Route 66), the Italian director Paolo Virzì decided to change it for that trip from north to south that is recreated, especially, in Florida.
Why? "Because it is the trip that I imagine myself doing with my wife, (actress) Micaela Ramazzotti, in 30 or 40 years."
Go on a roadtrip and stop wherever you want...
He laughs and we are struck by a question: What trip would you take with your partner, with the most special person in your life, in 30 or 40 years?
A road trip on the back of a caravan, old or new, seems like a great option. Just the two of them and the road. Almost all the time. The two, the road and all those people and/or animals that cross paths. unexpected people. Curious critters. People who want to share with you a bit of that journey. But those you drop at the next stop because you want to continue hand in hand with one person.
And get to your private heaven to eat a hamburger.