Review: On the Road for a Last Taste of Freedom in ‘The Leisure Seeker’

“The Leisure Seeker,” the first English-language feature from the Italian director Paolo Virzì, stars Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland as a couple who skip town in a 1975 Winnebago, heading from Wellesley, Mass., to Florida, without giving notice to anyone, including their grown children. Ella (Ms. Mirren) plans to take John (Mr. Sutherland), an expert on Ernest Hemingway, to the Hemingway Home in Key West. John has symptoms consistent with Alzheimer’s disease, although that term is never used. And Ella, nursing her pain with a steady stream of whiskey, is clearly dying; the diagnosis will be obvious to viewers long before the film reveals it. “The Leisure Seeker” becomes a defense of their right to live their last days as they see fit — on the road instead of in nursing homes or hospitals. There is a movie to be made about John and Ella; it’s not one that ends with “Me and Bobby McGee” over the credits.
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