We saw the film My Old Lady, last night, and we recommend it. The stars are Kevin Kline, Maggie Smith, and Kristin Scott Thomas. The story involves a middle-aged man (Kline) who inherits a large Paris apartment from his father. When he goes to Paris to sell the place, he discovers that his father bought the apartment from a woman in a viager sale. Under the French viager system, the owner can sell the property but continue living there for the rest of his or her life while collecting monthly payments from the buyer at a rate set by law. In other words, the buyer bets against the life of the tenant. The viager system got international attention in 1995, when an attorney named André-François Raffray died at the age of 77 after making viager payments for thirty years to Jeanne Calment, who was 90 when Raffray bought her apartment in Arles and 120 when he died. Raffrays family had to continue the payments until Calment died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 165 days - incontrovertibly the oldest person who ever lived. When Raffray died, Calments comment was, Sometimes in life we make bad bargains. Thats Jeanne Calment with the cigarette and Maggie Smith, in My Old Lady.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 17:26:10 +0000