Hope Gap ★★★★
Hope Gap is a look at a long-term marriage that falls apart
Hope Gap
Cast: Annette Bening, Bill Nighy, Josh O’connor Director: William Nicholson Duration: 1 h 40 m
In Noah Baumbach’s excellent Marriage Story, Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson play a young couple on the outs, with an eight- year- old son caught in the legal crossfire. But what if they’d stayed together for another 20 years, only to then part? Fighting for custody is no longer an issue, but this opens a new front — the battle for solidarity.
Writer/director William Nicholson is in his early 70s, but when he was a young man he partook in a story very like this, played out by his own parents. That may explain why Hope Gap feels very real in its dialogue and emotions, and it may also be why the story seems a little old- fashioned — or to put a more positive spin on it, “timeless.” All endings are the same, it suggests paradoxically, and all are unique.
Bill Nighy and Annette Bening are Edward and Grace, a married couple living a quiet life in an idyllic English seaside town. He’s a high school teacher with a predilection for toy soldiers and a fascination with Napoleon’s retreat for Moscow — in other word, Nighy playing to his understated strengths. She’s a dabbling writer with an English accent just soft enough that Bening makes it believable; she sounds like an American who moved there as a teen.
Josh O’connor — familiar to fans of The Crown as a young Prince Charles, and also appearing in the new adaptation of Emma — is their adult son, Jamie. He’s cut from the same cloth as his dad — subdued, stiff, slow to anger — whereas Mom is more emotional, liable to turn the tables during an argument by literally turning over the kitchen table.
During one of Jamie’s occasional weekend visits, Dad drops a bombshell — he’s met someone new, and plans to leave his wife. Grace is blindsided, but viewers won’t be. Well, aside from the fact that I’ve told you, I mean; the film isn’t about the announcement, but what follows. They’ve been married 10,592 days. Edward’s announcement rolls the relationship clock back to zero.
Jamie is upset by the news as well, but soon finds himself even more troubled by the strain of each of them pulling on him. On separate visits, he must deal with his father rationalizing his decision — variations on “She’ll be better off without me” — and with his mother’s spiral into grief, to the point where she’s openly discussing suicide.
Nicholson navigates the territory of humour and sadness that a story like this can engender. “I won’t have him using you as a messenger boy,” Grace fumes to Jamie, and almost immediately follows that up with: “Tell your father that.” She also buys a puppy, whom she christens Edward. The first thing she teaches the pooch is to “Stay!”
Nicholson, whose screenwriting career includes work on Les Misérables, Elizabeth: The Golden Age and Gladiator, adapted Hope Gap from his 1999 play The Retreat from Moscow. He’s also the writer of the excellent 1989 play Shadowlands and its film adaptation with Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.
He nails the tone perfectly here, in both words and actions — and lack of actions. There’s a scene of Nighy and O’connor parting company after a stroll at the seaside, almost- but- notquite- embracing, that will break the heart of anyone who’s ever known ( or been) one of those undemonstrative fathers or sons.
And how’s this for filial sentiment, pitched somewhere between a prayer and a plea? “Forgive me for needing you to be strong forever. Forgive me for fearing your unhappiness. As you suffer so I shall suffer. As you endure so I shall endure. Hold my hands and walk the old walk one last time, then let me go.”
Hope Gap had its world première at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall; like a lot of quieter films, it got a little lost amid the bright lights and red carpets. Here’s hoping it receives a little more notice now; it deserves all the love it can get. ΠΠΠΠ Hope Gap opens March 13 in Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary,
Edmonton, Hamilton and Toronto; March 20 in Regina, Saskatoon, Montreal and Quebec City; and Apr. 3 in
Ottawa