Love FROM A DIFFERENT TIME
Celebrated young star Saoirse Ronan plays a buttoned-up newlywed in Ian McEwan’s hotly anticipated screen adaptation of his acclaimed novel, On Chesil Beach
Saoirse is extraordinary – one of those actors who just with a silence can show you a thought process in her face
IT IS, in 2018, almost impossible to imagine the powerful sense of sexual propriety that accompanied the burgeoning romantic relationships of previous generations. With our liberal approach to living together before marriage – even for the Royals – it is unrealistic to expect that modern couples might be virgins when they walk down the aisle. Yet, for those who lit the touchpaper of their love affairs in post-war Britain, it was an altogether different story.
It is this climate of chaste social mores that sets the tone for Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, adapted by the author for the silver screen in a new release of the same name, starring the Oscar-nominated Saoirse Ronan. Against a backdrop of England at its most conservative, this is a repressed society yet to discover the sexual revolution and on the cusp of what was to become the Swinging Sixties.
POIGNANT PORTRAIT
SHORTLISTED for the Booker Prize, the 2007 novella is a poignant portrait of Florence and Edward Mayhew, a young newlywed couple, as they navigate their first hours of marriage on honeymoon in Dorset. Cinema audiences join them for dinner at a stuffy, seaside hotel, with the atmosphere becoming increasingly awkward as the prospect of consummating their union looms.
An argument ensues, bringing to light the profound divide in their attitudes and expectations.
‘It’s still an age of innocence,’ says Billy Howle, who plays Edward Mayhew, a somewhat gauche history graduate with a penchant for fisticuffs and Chuck Berry music. ‘There’s an American, more liberal influence starting to happen, but there’s this real dichotomy in the story, and it feels like Edward is at loggerheads with the world in which he finds himself.’
Ronan, who won critical acclaim for her portrayal of Briony in McEwan’s celebrated adaptation of Atonement a decade ago, plays Mayhew’s bride to be, be Florence Ponting, an ambitious young violinist from an affluent, middle-class family.
‘Ian is someone who writes women incredibly skilfully,’ says the American-Irish actress. ‘He’s an incredible storyteller who writes with such sensitivity. He’s tackling the issue of social pressure being put on young people – no matter what era they grew up in – to be or to behave in a certain way. That’s something Ian tends to be drawn towards as a writer, but he knows film is different from literature – and he’s good at giving you a bit of free rein and space to colour in the character the way you feel is right.’
Only when their quarrel culminates in a cataclysmic revelation do we begin to understand how the need to maintain appearances in polite society not only created tensions on Florence and Edward’s wedding night, but had a devastating impact on their marriage, too.