Blythe Danner shines in ’I’ll See You in My Dreams’

A work of quiet, crystalline empathy, “I’ll See You in My Dreams” is notable for reasons that nearly overshadow its modest yet indisputable charms. It’s a drama about the kind of people invisible to the movies and much of our culture - senior citizens in the early evening of their lives - and it grants its characters individuality in ways that are almost wholly free of cliché.

Above all, the movie’s a showcase for Blythe Danner, whose long and storied career has tended to favor stage over screen. The young ’uns know her as Gwyneth Paltrow’s mom or Robert De Niro’s wife in the “Focker” movies, which is to say the young ’uns hardly know her at all. “I’ll See You in My Dreams” may be the first movie since 1974’s “Lovin’ Molly” to put Danner at its center; the results are a minor revelation and a reminder of where the real acting talent in this family lies.

Danner’s character, Carol Peterson, is a widow of several decades, entirely comfortable in her independence. She has a regular bridge game at a nearby retirement community, but despite the entreaties of her friends there - a marvelous gang of hens played by Mary Kay Place, Rhea Perlman, and June Squibb (“Nebraska”) - Carol prefers to remain in her Los Angeles home. She has her garden and books, and she has her dog, a sweet old yellow lab named Hazel. She has no grandchildren, which she regrets, and no man in her life, which she doesn’t. It’s a small world and subtly well armored, but it’s hers.

Then a shift in her world occurs, and the armor starts flaking away. The business of “I’ll See You in My Dreams” is change; the tone is observational and not entirely uncritical. What does it take for this proud, even prickly, woman to bend? Director Brett Haley - he co-wrote the script with Marc Basch - introduces new elements into Carol’s life one by one, curious to see how an orderly life responds to disorder. It’s as though he were leading her gently to the water.

One of the elements is a rat that somehow infiltrates Carol’s living room and sends her screeching out to spend the night on the patio. Another is a pool cleaner named Lloyd (Martin Starr), who’s enlisted to help hunt for the rat and stays on to become a friend and drinking companion. Lloyd is a poet in his early 30s who has moved back with his parents for a spell; while he hasn’t succumbed to failure yet, he’s catching his breath. The two forge a genuine friendship that every so often teeters on the edge of sexual, which discomfits and intrigues both parties as well as the audience. One of the strengths of “I’ll See You in My Dreams” is that neither we nor Carol can predict where she’s going.

She’s wooed as well by Bill, a regally relaxed retiree played by Sam Elliott, who has never been more tender or sexy. Their flirtation at a pharmacy - he sees her at the vitamin counter and purrs “Don’t need all that. Just right the way you are” - sets the tone: a cool and classy woman melting under lightly sustained rising temperatures. Carol and Bill have lived long enough to know exactly who they are, so the usual games don’t apply. Their mutual surprise at coming to know someone new, though, is lovely to behold.

There are moments of real comedy in “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” including a round of senior citizen speed-dating that puts Danner across the table from Max Gail, of “Barney Miller,” and a bit where the ladies partake of some medical marijuana only to run into a cop (Reid Scott) on their way back from a late-night munchies run. And there’s a scene at a karaoke bar, where Carol, who sang professionally in an earlier life, uncorks a weary, lived-in rendition of the old Julie London classic “Cry Me a River.” Sitting at the bar, Lloyd leans back in awe. Sitting in the audience, you may lean back and mourn all the Blythe Danner screen performances that might have been and never were.

The movie throws a curveball or two in its final act, and you’re not sure if the director is playing God or if God is. “I’ll See You in My Dreams” is good enough, though - honest, intimate, underplayed - to keep you on board. A critic friend of mine has compared this film to those of the 20th-century Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu, and he’s on to something: Like Ozu, Haley has fashioned an unhurried contemplation of ordinary lives that reveals their endless inner richness. That it’s also a master class in acting, delivered by a woman who can say more with a raised eyebrow than most performers say in their entire careers, is one more grace note in a movie brimming with them.