ALL HEATH AND NO TEETH
Hampstead has two brilliant stars twinkling with charm and a perfect romantic location... but what about wit, spark and sizzle?
Hampstead turns out to be the sort of film that wants you to like it so badly that seeing it is like watching a puppy rolling on its back in playful submission, begging you to tickle its tummy. Look, look, it almost barks at you, aren’t I sweet, aren’t I endearing? I mean, I’ve got lovely Diane Keaton wearing a kooky beret, gorgeous-looking Hampstead, and about eight bars of a simple romantic refrain that I’m going to play over and over (and over) again. What could you possibly not like?
Well… how about the formulaic inevitability of making one of the characters in this thoroughly London-based story an American simply to enhance the box-office appeal over there? Or the working assumption that any film featuring senior characters and clearly aimed predominantly at a senior audience can get away with really lazy physical comedy? Poor dears, they’ll laugh at anything at that age… except, of course, they won’t.
Do I protest too much? Well, probably a little. Hampstead isn’t actively bad but it is disappointing, the sort of lightweight, middle-brow offering that Americans, just occasionally, mistake for high art, especially when it’s set somewhere as photogenic, if ever so slightly smug, as Hampstead.
But surely not this time, as director Joel Hopkins takes a story that potentially could have delivered another The Lady In The Van, and, well, falls short.
But that’s not the fault of either of the two leads – Keaton and Brendan Gleeson – who both deliver perfectly nice performances, albeit in a way that the combination of the two, somewhat inexplicably, is less than the sum of the constituent parts. Or to put it another way, we never quite believe that Emily (Keaton) and Donald (Gleeson), the conspicuously clean-looking ‘homeless’ man she falls in love with, are supposed to be together.
This is a shame because it’s not often that a woman over 60 is the leading character in a film, and it’s even less often that she’s actually played by an actress over 70. Keaton, star of The Godfather and Annie
Hall, of course, and who, just for the record, looks fabulous, is 71. Gleeson, by the way, is a mere 62 but definitely can pass for older, so I don’t think any lack of screen sizzle
‘Keaton and Gleeson are simply too good for there not to be some fun here’
can b e b lamed o n a n a ge g ap. I t’s s omething else, s omething l ess o bvious, s omething t he director p robably w ouldn’t h ave s een w hen he p eered t hrough h is v iewfinder. It c ould b e t hat E mily f eels a s i f s he’s b een built by numbers by screenwriter Robert Festinger. She’s American, recently widowed, betrayed by her husband before he died, running out of money, surrounded by a circle of insincere British ‘friends’… all in the fading grandeur of a flat overlooking Hampstead H eath. It i s t here – o r, s trictly s peaking, f rom t he attic, while experimenting with a pair of recently r efound b inoculars – t hat s he s pots Donald, who’s built a ramshackle shed on a long-forgotten corner of the heath that used to be part of a hospital. Now – in a story loosely based on the realshack), life experiences of Hampstead homeless man Harry Hallowes a decade ago – greedy developers w ant t o b uild l uxury fl ats o n t he site, p utting D onald’s p eaceful, e co-friendly (an idyllic-looking allotment surrounds his 17-year occupation under threat. It’s l awyers o ne w eek, t hugs t he n ext… u ntil lonely E mily r ides t o h is s alvation. Keaton and Gleeson are simply too good for there not to be some fun here, despite a leisurely pace, much hanging on a rather arcane piece of English law, and Emily’s eventually rather annoying habit of failing to speak up for herself. But poorer films than this – Scenes Of A Sexual Nature comes to mind – have done a better job of capturing the magic of Hampstead Heath, and the secondary characters here really struggle to make it into t hree d imensions. A lso, S tephen Warbeck’s e ndlessly r epeated t heme did e ventually d rive m e s lightly m ad. Director Joel Hopkins is best known for Last Chance Harvey, from 2008, and The Love Punch, from 2013, which both came, cast a ripple or t wo o n t he c inematic waters, and then swiftly went. With Hampstead , Ifear, h e’s m ade i t three i n a r ow.