Yrs, this Shirley MacLaine is the cranky aging woman that started with her role of Aurora in "Terms of Endearment" five years before. In fact, it's her first leading theatrical role since then, prior to playing Ouiser and Meryl's movie star mother. She's a very talented pianist who never made a name for herself, having moved from Russia to New York City and finally to London where she now is a piano teacher. Her newest student, Navin Chowdhry, is a very talented teenager, but she consumes his life with more than just piano lessons, basically trying to replace his mother and make her the child she never had. She's very dedicated, but she's a bit too much, and eventually she finds herself in conflict with his real mother Shabana Azmi and eventually him as he tries to make him into something that he isn't. He wants to be a concert pianist of the finest training possible, but he also wants to be a regular kid and enjoy his youth. Not on her watch.

A fabulous view of the world of music, this shows how ones are can consume them into forgetting about humanity, and everybody is truly superb. MacLaine deservedly won a Golden Globe (tying with two other actresses) but was overlooked an Oscar nomination in a very tough year. She shows every facet of this fantastically eccentric character, not your typical domineering old crank, but someone with a soul that has been damaged, and you see it in brief flashbacks that fortunately use MacLaine but only briefly in playing her younger self. Chowdhry is absolutely exuberant as the student, curious and caring, yet needing space and not finding it with the two "mothers" in his life. When he brings out the joy in her, she youthens several decades. In return, she gives him every ounce of herself, psychologically falling in love with him as a mentor often does for a protege. In a sense, it's a reverse gender Svengali.

Dame Peggy Ashcroft is terrific as MacLaine's landlady, just as sweet and curious as she was as Mrs. Moore in "A Passage to India". An ambitious singer and an aging gay doctor are also part of their little family, and it's very sweet to watch the young Chowdhry bond with the doctor, having come to his rescue while he was being roughed up on the streets in an obvious gay bashing. For me, this is MacLaine's best "Terms of Endearment" performance, superbly directed by John Schlesinger and perfect in practically every detail. Azmi deserves credit for making the mother very likeable. This is best watched with a full stereo so you get to hear every note of music as if you were in one of the greatest concert halls of the world. Every sound that comes out of this, including the dualog, is a true work of art.