ONE HELL OF A SPECIAL FILM
With an all star cast and two very talented newcomers, Handsome Devil delivers an emotional punch that’s a proper crowd pleaser in this coming -of-age drama
Handsome Devil (15A) Funny and emotional grand slam
NOTHING about The Stag, writer-director John Butler’s previous movie, will prepare you for Handsome Devil. Where the last offering was a broad comedy, albeit ultimately with a marshmallow heart, this coming-of-age offering is a great deal subtler, expertly blending drama and often very funny comedy as it makes its way to a climax that will, if you have a heart at all, leave you cheering.
It’s the story of Ned, who also narrates the movie. Dumped in boarding school by parents who live in Dubai (Ardal O’Hanlon and, playing against type as a brassy stepmother, Amy Huberman, for the maybe three minutes they appear at all), he is a square peg in a round hole. The school is obsessed with rugby and Ned is more into indie bands, and inevitably is branded gay by his classmates because he doesn’t immerse himself in the macho culture (whether he is gay, or not, never is confirmed).
For his own safety, as much as for peace of mind, he is assigned to a room of his own but when a new boy, Conor, transfers from another school, he ends up sharing the room.
Conor is a star rugby player, and after proving himself in the most violent way on the pitch, immediately is accepted by everyone on the team. In the meantime, despite initial hostility on Ned’s part, the two boys start to bond, and decide to enter a talent competition as a guitar duo.
THE rugby coach (Moe Dunford, who starred in Patrick’s Day) sees this as a needless distraction from Conor’s rugby career and issues an ultimatum, and after Conor fails to show up for the contest, it provokes Ned into a shocking betrayal of his new friend when he reveals a secret he knows will have seismic consequences.
Into the mix comes a new English teacher, Dan Sherry (Andrew Scott, excellent as ever) who is hiding a secret of his own and who realises very late in the day that advice he hands out to others really is advice he should be taking himself.
If that all sounds a little cryptic, it’s only because it would be a shame to offer anything here resembling a spoiler. What unfolds is in many ways a familiar trope – boys finding their place in the world – but it is delivered with such verve and flair, it somehow feels fresh and deeply involving. Small details of boarding school life are deliciously observed. When, at assembly on the first day of term, the headmaster announces the previous English teacher has died over the summer, off camera a boy shouts ‘get in!’; another boy, stuffed into a dustbin in the corridor, nonetheless is blamed for his own misfortune.
The movie ends with a genuinely thrilling rugby match (‘choreographed’ by Mr Huberman, no less, or Brian O’Driscoll to you and me) and a resolution that, while maybe a little too pat for its good, couldn’t be more of a crowd pleaser.
Nicolas Galitzine, who plays Conor, is a young English actor, which came as a surprise, because he has the standard boarding school accent off to a T, and while he is very good in the role, it is Fionn O’Shea as Ned who absolutely steals the movie. He is, if there is any justice, a superstar in the making, adept at comedy (he previously starred in the very funny children’s TV show Roy) and drama alike.
There are some pacing issues, and the unusual feeling that this could have been ten minutes longer rather than, as so often is the case, shorter, and it loses a star because of that. That’s a technical issue, though – the emotional punch it delivers is five star all the way.
For a Dane, director Lone Scherfig has a remarkably keen eye and ear for the intricate details of British class and period.
Her 2009 feature An Education wonderfully evoked suburban London in the Sixties, The Riot Club (2014) went to town on badlybehaved Oxbridge toffs, and now
here’s Their Finest, a beguiling romantic not-quite-comedy set in 1940.
Like An Education, which was based on the memoir by journalist Lynn Barber, Their Finest has also sprung from a book, in this case a novel by Lissa Evans about the making of a propaganda film thinly disguised as a drama, at the height of the Blitz. And like An Education, except more so, the story is above all about a particular young woman asserting her place in a world ruled by men. This is the engaging Catrin Cole (charmingly played by Gemma Arterton), not a radiant English rose but a sunny Welsh daffodil, who has arrived in wartime London from Ebbw Vale with struggling artist husband Ellis (Jack Huston).
She is a talented copywriter, who goes for an interview with the Ministry of Information for what she thinks is a secretarial job. In fact they want her to craft ‘women’s dialogue’ for their propaganda features.
The contemptuous film-industry word for female chatter in such films is ‘slop’ (in reality it was more commonly known as ‘nausea’), and we are left in no doubt by Gaby Chiappe’s script, which just occasionally errs on the heavy-handed side, that ministry women are third-class citizens.
The one female who has risen in the ranks is a rather butch lesbian (improbably yet nicely played by the decidedly non-butch Rachael Stirling). But Catrin finds herself firmly at the bottom of the heap.
‘Obviously we can’t pay you as much as the chaps,’ she is told by her pompous new boss, played, or rather over-played, by Richard E. Grant. On the whole, Chiappe — an experienced TV writer (Lark Rise To Candleford, Shetland, The Level) here making her featurefilm debut — does a lovely job of weaving Catrin’s doughty career progress in with her burgeoning feelings for screenwriting colleague Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin). Conveniently, Ellis turns out to be rather a rotter, whereas Buckley, beneath his sneery, superior air, is a decent sort of cove, with a matinee-idol smile. Their project, one designed not only to repair morale left in tatters by the Luftwaffe, but also to persuade the Americans to come to the aid of the plucky Brits, is a film based on a newspaper story about heroic twin sisters from Essex.
Catrin is despatched to Southend to get the sisters’ story; how they borrowed their father’s rickety fishing boat and braved the Channel to rescue troops trapped at Dunkirk. Never mind that it isn’t entirely true; facts are pliable in wartime.
Their Finest is a serious tale, however. It is littered with casualties of war and lurches in some unexpected directions with several, tragic twists. Yet it is leavened with plenty of deft comic touches.
Mostly, these are supplied by Bill Nighy, as a vain, mannered old ham of an actor, called Ambrose Hilliard. Eddie Marsan and Helen McCrory, as Hilliard’s agent and his sister, provide sterling comic support. The film is witty and warm-hearted, and offers a fresh, enlightening perspective on a well-worn subject.