TV REVIEWS : A Valentine ‘Portrait’ of Twilight Years

“The Portrait,” starring Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall, is the most durable valentine you’re likely to find on your TV this weekend (premiering on TNT cable at 5, 7 and 9 p.m. today).

Peck and Bacall are radiant together, catching the afterglow of a lengthy, golden marriage that now, amid the couple’s packing crates and empty bookcases, is moving on, gathering up its treasures for a quieter life in a cottage.

But nobody’s nodding off. The tail end of this life is a tangle of emotion.

Director Arthur Penn draws moments from Peck and Bacall that are endearing and funny, especially as they sit before their exasperated artist daughter (Peck’s real-life daughter Cecilia Peck) for a formal portrait and joke and tease one another.

Peck has seldom been known for amusing roles, but here he’s found an absent-minded literary character, on its surface not all that original, whom he layers with genuine warmth and humor. And Bacall’s take-charge wife, rather than cliche-aggressive, is a sunny character who makes her love palpable, like the sound of chimes.

This is the rare instance of a stage play (“Painting Churches” by Tina Howe) that looks more effective on the screen. The movie adaptation (by scenarist Lynn Roth) has structurally shored up the play while transforming it through the alchemy of its stars.

Besides being a drama about time’s fleeting chariot, this is a parent-child story. The daughter has come for much more than a portrait: She is seeking parental and artistic recognition from parents--and this is the story’s refreshing point--whose mutual ardor has always been too big and self-contained to allow the girl the attention she wanted.

Peck’s snowy-haired dad explains to his daughter: We are who we are, now get on with your life. That’s a tough and bracing thought in this age of supersensitive child rearing. But how rare, in any medium, to see a husband and wife, fresh as their wedding cake, who radiate love and sexiness in their 70s. And older stars not afraid to play old.