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gets worse and his letters home more worrying, and when Philip (now all grown up and played by Claflin) travels to Italy to find him, he receives the worst news of all. Ambrose is dead.
The death certificate blames a brain tumour but the headstrong, hot-blooded Philip isn’t convinced. Might Rachel – a woman apparently fond of making home-made tisanes – be to blame? When she unexpectedly arrives at the estate he has just inherited, he has the perfect opportunity to find out. Or rather he would if he wasn’t so immediately bewitched by her beauty that he falls instantly in love.
There’s an unexpectedly chaste TV feel to what ensues, with Claflin giving it slightly too much, Weisz not quite enough, and director Roger Michell (Notting Hill and Le Week-End) delaying his big twist to a point when we no longer quite care.
The influence of Woody Allen is never far away as two American ‘indie’ films arrive with central characters that Allen would definitely recognise. In Norman: The Moderate Rise And Tragic Fall Of A New York Fixer (15A) Richard Gere plays an ageing New York Jewish chancer still chasing a deal, while in Wilson (15A)
HH Woody Harrelson plays a middle-aged misery-guts whose dysfunctional life is plunged into fresh crisis when his father dies.
Both have their moments – particularly as the lowly Israeli politician that Norman befriends unexpectedly becomes prime minister. But while Norman really is too long, at almost two hours, Wilson feels even longer, despite being almost half an hour shorter. And no, Woody, in real life there isn’t a leggy blonde yoga teacher round every corner.