‘Not just women
FINDING Your Feet is far from your average depiction of the “golden age”.
A moving comedy about a diverse group of energetic baby boomers, it starts with Sandra, played by Imelda Staunton, discovering that her husband of 40 years is having an affair with her best friend.
After moving in with her laid-back older sister Bif (Celia Imrie), we see how the uptight character struggles to fit into her new world, but when Bif manages to persuade a reluctant Sandra to join in with her community dance class, she starts to give life a second chance.
“It is refreshing that we’re not all just plain women sitting around a card table in cardigans — although that could be quite funny,” says 62-yearold Staunton of the film’s appeal.
“We get to cover so many bases and it’s nice to be able to show that without it having to be, ‘a love story’.”
Imrie, 65, agrees, and points out the subjects discussed in Finding Your Feet would never have made it to screen 10 years ago.
“Old people dancing — I’m just going to put it bluntly now — or divorce conversations, dementia conversations; honestly, it’s quite raw,” she explains. “Those topics would not have been considered able to make an interesting story.”
The sisters the actresses portray are complete opposites — well-todo Sandra has been busy raising a family in Surrey while desperately trying to keep up appearances as a member of the “tennis set”, while hippy Bif lives in a council flat on an East London estate, and doesn’t care what anyone thinks about her.
Having fallen out over a CND march years back, it’s been a long time since the siblings have seen each other, and when Sandra turns up on Bif’s doorstep with no-one else to turn to, the dynamic is certainly entertaining.
“In the initial stages, you just think, ‘Well, how on earth is this going to work?’” remarks Imrie, who’s starred in Bridget Jones’s Diary, Calendar Girls and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, “and it doesn’t — for a while.”
The problem is, neither sister approves of the other one’s life choices, and it’s an interesting look at how differently people’s lives can turn out: “Beware the woman who wants what she thinks is a happy life,” London-born Staunton, whose character revels in the fact her husband has recently been knighted.
“A woman who’s happy to sacrifice her own life for being on the arm of her husband, whose life is obviously so much more important tha muses Staunton, “[Sandra] doesn’t mi because it means she gets the title, sh kudos — well, how’s that going to help
Feeling like we have to be somethi is an issue many of us can relate to th stars admit.
“We’re lucky, in a way, because we other people all the time, if we want t Imrie, who was born in Surrey. “That’ release, actually. You’ll walk a long w somebody who’s completely OK with w are.”
“Society is always telling — partic women — what you should look like, should be like, how you should sound, should do — and yet, we’re told, ‘Be yo