George Carlin once said that if we knew when we were going to die than there would be a lot less wasted time. That was in 1978. Since then the world has become a high-tech industry obsessed with creating devices to save as much time as possible, but where does that time go? We spend so much time in a rush trying to save it that we never just stop and embrace it. John Lennon was right: “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans.” Yet, if we knew when our time was up there would be no wasted moments because with death in the background life would be forced into the foreground.

What would you do if you found out that you only had three weeks to live? That is the situation that Georgia Byrd finds herself in, in Last Holiday. After bumping her head at work, the company doctor decides to administer Georgia with a CAT-scan, to which the results are bleak, as she is given roughly three weeks to live.

What did Georgia do to deserve this? She asks God and finds few answers. Her entire life she has lived with a degree of respect and decency, working at a department store to earn a decent living. Patiently waiting for that moment when greatness comes knocking at her door and she can fulfill her dream of one day opening her own restaurant. Yet Georgia has committed one fatal sin, she has let her life pass her by without even knowing it; taking time for granted, assuming that if greatness was destined for her it would make its way around eventually.

Most of us can relate. We waste so much of our lives waiting instead of searching; serendipity is not a theology it is an excuse to prolong this process. Sure, it is possible from time to time for great things to find their way to your front doorstep, but what if they don’t? What happens if you spend a life waiting and all there is to show for it are wasted moments? It’s funny how the hardest questions in life are sometimes the most banal.

Upon receiving the news, Georgia opens her eyes to realize that life has been going on around her like a party that she wasn’t invited to. So she quits her job, sells all of her savings bonds and flies to a European resort which she dreamed of one day visiting to meet the admired Chef Didier (the ever entertaining Gerard Depardieu), with the intention of blowing all of her money to live the life that has only ever existed in her dreams.

There she becomes the point of awe to the posh guests at the resort who are fascinated by this woman who they assume is rich, and yet finds true pleasures in such small things. “Have you ever looked at that ceiling and wanted to cry,” she asks one of the receptionists at the front desk. There is even room in there for a nice little love story to work itself out.   

It is at this point that I should finish with that plot and tell you that Last Holiday was directed by Wayne Wang, whose specialty over the years has been to take commonplace material and inject it with small emotional truths by creating familiar environments around strong, likeable characters. Here, Wang creates a character who is not only the perfect foray into one of star Queen Latifah’s best performances, but also one that forces us to ask questions about the nature of life: how we live it, what it is that we take for granted on a daily basis and what we are missing out on. These are all important question that we also seem to take for granted, and although it is not always desired for a film to provide us with answers to the questions it raises, the ones that Last Holiday provides are both truthful and touching.