'My Old Lady" will hold an enormous fascination for real-estate agents and homeowners over 40, but a sizable portion of the movie-going populace would perhaps miss the point of the story — and do so willingly. There are three central characters here, played by Maggie Smith, Kevin Kline and Kristin Scott Thomas, with the sum of their ages totaling 203. Most of the action (if you can call it that) takes place inside an old, dusty apartment building in Paris. Most of the conversation is about finances, rent and property law. There you have it — the kind of movie that would have my brothers run screaming from the room in a frantic stampede and take cover in the nearest theater playing "The Avengers."

Part of me empathizes with their point of view, but another part — that is, my-old-apartment-in-Paris-coveting part — will insist on seeing "My Old Lady" through to its happy ending. I'm not alone in this obsession for moldy Parisian dwelling spaces, considering that 14-sq.-meter former maids' rooms will sell for the equivalent of ¥15 million and up. And the Japanese distributors were shrewd enough to put in the term "isan souzokunin" ("inheritor") in the title, a timely topic many Japanese have no trouble relating to. A quick scan of the nation's business magazines reveal that the country's super senior society has spawned a multitude of problems concerning inheritance tax and houses vacated by aging or deceased parents that are worth zilch on the market. Siblings fight over cash inheritances but will do anything to avoid the cost and hassle of dealing with unwanted real estate, apparently.

"My Old Lady" explains how this is constructed in France, which is to say, it's conducted with more elegance, romance and a lot of good wine. Kevin Kline stars as 57-year-old Mathias Gold, a down-and-out New Yorker who has spent his last penny on a plane ticket to Paris so he can sell an apartment building his father had bequeathed him. The apartment is in the fashionable Marais district and Mathias thinks the sale will be lucrative enough to set him up for the rest of his life. Things go wrong from the get-go: It turns out the building still belongs to its former owner, 90-something Mathilde Girard (Maggie Smith) and if Mathias wishes to sell, he must pay her a sort of reverse mortgage (or perverse punishment, whichever way you look at it) of €2,400 a month — until she dies. The system is called viager, and though this is the way the French have protected their history, old architecture and senior citizens, I'm guessing that many a murder plan has been hatched as a result of it.