British humour infuses ageing

Finding Your Feet is a lively, sentimental and delightfully amusing comedy at which the British are so good.

The theme is about growing old and the challenges that await. Calling upon a stellar English cast, director Richard Loncraine has provided a bouncy, good-natured production that, for all its fun, does have a lot of death in it. But that’s what tends to happen when you grow old.

Finding Your Feet allows the formidable trio of Imelda Staunton, Celia Imrie and Timothy Spall plenty of space to leave their mark as they tackle love and death and growing old together.

Imelda Staunton plays Lady Sandra Abbott, a wronged society wife who is forced to drop her superior airs and imbibe real oxygen when her marriage crashes. She arrives unheralded on the shabby doorstep of her older sister, Elizabeth, a free-spirited, bohemian, played by an effervescent Celia Imrie. They haven’t seen each other in years. Elizabeth is a never-married misfit with a wide array of oddball friends and liberal causes, who prescribes that the rude, anger-driven Sandra attend senior-citizens dance classes with her to lift her spirits.

Sandra is horrible. She’s racist, classist and narcissistic in ways that will certainly take more than a rumba to fix. But she thaws out a tiny bit and reluctantly joins the class where she meets a motley group of characters, including Charlie Glover (Timothy Spall), a cheery Cockney furniture restorer who knows how to dance. His wife is in a care home with Alzheimers. Joanne Lumley has a minor role as one of Elizabeth’s dance friends who has a bit of a history with men, having been married five times.

The film is a charming reminder of how a feel-good script and good acting can lift the soul. It is visually appealing and has far

more polish and style than most British sitcoms, even lending a touch of lacquer to a fading London council estate.