Here is a brittle and contrived but rather elegant Brit thriller about literary paranoia from debut feature screenwriter Alex MacKeith and director Alice Troughton, herself a cinema first-timer having had much acclaim working on TV. The upscale and sophisticated mise-en-scène is rather French; Julie Delpy has a role here and looks quite at home.
Richard E Grant plays JM Sinclair, a bestselling, sharp-tongued author who gives roguish interviews repeating the old maxim that good artists borrow but great ones steal. He is married to art collector Hélène (Delpy) and they live in a handsome country estate with extensive grounds and a lake. But Sinclair, usually so prolific, has retreated to a haunted creative silence following the tragic death of his elder son; the parents are now concerned with moody and mercurial younger boy Bertie (Stephen McMillan) who needs to be coached to get a place at Oxford to read English.
