The Sense of an Ending

Lukewarm adaptation of Julian Barnes’ novel Dir: Ritesh Batra 1hr 48mins (15)

An adaptation of a Booker Prize-winning novel, starring Jim Broadbent, Harriet Walter and Charlotte Rampling – sounds like a sure-fire recipe for success, doesn’t it, asked Deborah Ross in The Spectator. Yet I’m sorry to say that, despite its classy pedigree, this lacklustre adaptation of Julian Barnes’ novel is a definite disappointment.

Part of the problem lies in its unsympathetic protagonist, said Phil de Semlyen in Empire. Our hero, played by Broadbent, is a cranky divorcee who is forced to re-examine his emotional past after receiving an unexpected legacy. Yet far from making him more likeable, this merely makes him even more self-absorbed. Can he trust his own memories? Walter plays the long-suffering ex-wife forced to listen to his maunderings, while Rampling brings her signature “icy reserve” to the role of his embittered ex-girlfriend. For a film whose plot turns on suicide and forbidden love, this is an oddly “passionless” work, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. The desired emotional payoff never comes, and despite its title, we wait in vain for a “satisfying sense of an ending”.

I blame the source material, said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail. Like Barnes’ book, which was stylishly written but ultimately “dreary”, this adaptation “cannot overcome what it fundamentally is: a monotonous trudge through the unfulfilled life of a self-absorbed, mildly unpleasant, rather drippy elderly man”.