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In a luxurious British retirement home for retired musicians, two questions circle each other. One involves former opera stars who were once married, long ago and briefly. The other is about a gala that may be able to raise enough money to keep the home from closing.
That second question must have been more convincing in the original stage version of “Quartet,” written by Ronald Harwood, whose “The Dresser” remains one of the best plays and films ever written about the theater. You can sit in a theater and hope the retirement home can be saved. But when you look at this film, you see a stately manor surrounded by pastoral beauty. The location, Hedsor House in Buckinghamshire, near London, obviously suggests a multimillion-pound budget and isn’t going to be saved by a gala especially not after we see how small the well-dressed audience is. Their tickets must have been really expensive.