Michael Grandage’s new film has been coolly received by some, but I found it an interestingly fragile and Rattiganesque melodrama of repression and regret. It is set on a gloomy English seafront and intercuts between the buttoned-up 1950s and the late 1990s. As an earnestly intended drama I can imagine it being performed on stage at a weekday matinee, the climactic speeches echoing wanly around the auditorium. But in its contrived way, it conjures a very English sort of shame.
Screenwriter Ron Nyswaner has adapted the novel by Bethan Roberts, itself inspired by the famous ménage between novelist EM Forster, Forster’s policeman lover Bob Buckingham and Bob’s wife, May. Linus Roache and Gina McKee play ageing married couple Tom and Marion, respectively a former police offer and retired schoolteacher. To Tom’s dismay, Marion has taken a local resident into their home to be cared for by her as part of a volunteer outreach programme: cantankerous stroke survivor Patrick, played by Rupert Everett.
