TONS OF TALENT BUT A POT POURRI OF CLICHES
THE cast list for this somewhat forced ‘bittersweet comedy’ actually reads more like a guest list for a party for stalwart, muchadmired British acting talent of a certain age.
Imelda Staunton, Celia Imrie, Timothy Spall, Joanna Lumley, John Sessions and Josie Lawrence all feature, making it a small mystery that there’s no sign anywhere of Bill Nighy. I looked, hard, but he’s definitely not there.
The story lurches with clunky predictability from deepest Surrey, where uptight Sandra (Staunton) wallows in great affluence but no discernible happiness, to liberal North London, where her semi-estranged sister Bif (Imrie) exists very contentedly in an untidy council flat, spending every Thursday at a dance class for those nudging pensionable age. A little colour in her hair, and a predilection for open-air swimming, confirms that Bif is a fully paid-up bohemian.
When Sandra discovers that her pompous husband (Sessions) is having an affair, she decamps to Bif’s place, and soon alienates Bif’s friends with her high-handed snootiness. She is especially snotty towards pot-smoking Charlie (Spall, overdoing the decent old cove act) who lives on a narrowboat and drives a decrepit van, although only, you understand, to free up the capital to keep his dementiastricken wife in a handsome care home.
It’s hardly a spoiler, since it couldn’t be more signposted, to reveal that the road from leafy Surrey to a North London council estate is actually a journey of self-discovery for Sandra, in which she re-engages with Bif, is reminded how much she loves dancing, and finds the right values in the nick of time. Director
Richard Loncraine, and writers Meg Leonard and Nick Moorcroft, resist no cliche or caricature in what is essentially a melange, perhaps even a pot pourri, of themes from other, better British films such as Shirley Valentine and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
Infidelity, mortality, senility, bereavement, terminal cancer, the waltz, the jive, the two-step … they’re all crowbarred in as if in deference to a check list of issues, fears and lifestyle options confronting the over-60s.
It’s a kind of cinematic version of painting by numbers, and rather a waste of talent, and yet for all that, I amazed myself by quite enjoying it! If you’re of that certain age, I dare say you might, too.