23 WALKS

Paul Morrison Alison Steadman, Dave Johns

Sixty-something dog walkers Fern (Alison Steadman) and Dave (Dave Johns) meet walking their dogs (hers: a Yorkshire terrier; his: a German Shepherd) in a North London park. Paul Morrison’s film subsequently doesn’t quite have the courage of its convictions to etch the tentative relationship solely through 23 walks (it’s about nine). Instead the result is a gentle, slightly dull, late-in-life romance that finds its dramas by characters withholding secrets (once is fine), contrivances and a social-problems agenda that seems to have been parachuted in from a Ken Loach movie. It doesn’t shy away from the realities of OAP love — there is a tastefully done sexagenarian sex scene — and Steadman and Johns are likeable but neither deliver characters that compel. Still, for the caninophiles, it’s pooch porn.