Serkis braves scary terrain

BREATHE

THINK of Andy Serkis’s directing debut as an angry fist, wrapped in elegant silk. Sporty, globe-trotting Robin Cavendish (Andrew Garfield; irresistible) contracts polio, olio, in Kenya, in 1958. Back in England, the 28-year-old ld finds himself paralysedd from the neck down and plugged into a respirator. He can hardly bear to look at his newborn son. Yet, with the help of his wife,e, Diana (Claire Foy), he’s able to embrace family life and become mobile once more.

The first half feels designed to make Downton Abbey fans drool. It’s once we hit the permissive, grubby Seventies that things get interesting. The sexual dynamic between the couple, pictured, becomes knotty, while a trip to a German polio “sanctuary” is the stuff of nightmares. Serkis shoots the scene so that both patients and carers look deformed. In seeking to hide frailty, these scientists have created something far more sick.

Robin wants control and freedom. A series of patronising doctors imply he’s being greedy. Scriptwriter

William Nicholson gets to the heart of the matter with a lovely line. To raise money for wheelchairs, Diana and Robin gog capp in hand to a rich toff: “How ddo we play this?” asks DianDiana. “Are we plucky or pitiful?”p

Serkis’s populist offering, based on a true story, has something in common wwith last year’s proeeuthanasia weepie, Me BBefore You. Though it sugsuggests a paralysed man can bbe an ideal husband, it also insistsinsi the severely disabled have the right to choose when they die. The Bing Crosby song, True Love, dominates the climax; Bing, a staunch Catholic, must be spinning in his grave. Even for the non-religious, this is scary terrain. Let the hyperventilating begin.

The London Film Festival continues until Oct 15 (bfi.org.uk/lff )