The Weapon (1956)

Wait till you see what I’ve found! The son of American war widow Elsa Jenner (Lizabeth Scott), young Erik (Jon Whiteley) and his friends are playing in the rubble of bombed-out post-war London’s buildings at Aldersgate when they locate a handgun buried in a brick. The gun goes off and one of the boys is shot and wounded. Erik goes on the run, believing he has killed his friend. A policeman relates the events to his mother and explains the boy who was shot is alive but in hospital. Efforts to locate Erik are aided by US Army Captain Mark Andrews (Steve Cochran) drafted into the investigation by Supt. Mackenzie (Herbert Marshall) of the Yard after it is discovered that the gun which Erik found was used in a murder of an American serviceman during the war. So a dangerous criminal currently unknown is potentially pursuing the boy. Erik goes to the cafe where his mother usually works but she is not there and leaves before he can eat food her colleague is getting for him when a man sees the gun in his pocket. He runs off again just before Elsa arrives with Cpt Andrews. As he gets closer to finding Erik, Andrews encounters Vivienne Pascal (Nicole Maurey) a dance-hall hostess with a connection to the gun’s original owner. But she has all but lost her faith in all things good, declaring I am dead. As Captain Andrews interviews her she is shot through the window by Henry. Andrews pursues him but is overpowered in an empty factory. Disturbed by a policeman Henry jumps out of a window into the Thames. As Andrews continues his investigation into the gun’s whereabouts, Erik’s mother Elsa finally locates her son with the helpful assistance of relative stranger Joshua Henry. He falsely alleges that Erik had stolen a bottle of milk from him. Henry starts wooing Elsa. Meanwhile, Erik sees his photo in the newspapers and continues his way across the city, trying to get food and pick up work as the hunt continues … We abide by their institutions and their methods. Who said the fatalistic world of noir couldn’t have children? This is one of the rare genre entries to break that rule. Children represent hope, an emotion that has no place in the rain slicked streets and smoky clubs with their tough gangsters, private eyes, molls and femmes fatales. And here the same kind of story told in The Yellow Balloon is dramatised with verve and energy. From Blackfriars Bridge to Covent Garden, all around St Paul’s Cathedral and Lambeth, the city is shot schematically and expressively, tracking different characters as the quest story unfolds. Hard man Cochran gets a good role – both detective and romancer, even if at the conclusion he’s late to the party. To be a detective you must by silent and secret. You can’t give anything away. Cole is a true villain, a deceitful crim with murder on his mind, a step away from the hilarity of the jolly spiv he usually essays with the St Trinians girls. The kids here have met a properly evil man who tries to have his way with Elsa to get to Erik. Maurey has a nice sequence in which she gets to utter the truly grim sentiments of the genre, the polar opposite to the mothering instincts of Scott in one of a couple of British films she took at the time. Whiteley is impressive in another of the exceptional child characters he played in his brief career. There’s a tremendously compelling sensibility at work here: the nasty depths of human behaviour represented across the geography of London when it was still murky and foggy, wet and damp, replete with double decker buses, curious onlookers, in the process of rebuilding itself after the War and not quite at one with modernity, filled with the detritus of war for kids to get killed. Incredibly exciting, vividly staged and shot, this is an unusual and excellent film noir, shot around London’s East End and at Nettlefold Studios by Reginald H. Wyer with production design by John Stoll. Thanks to the ever excellent Talking Pictures for screening it. Directed by Val Guest with uncredited work by producer Hal E. Chester who co-wrote with Fred Freiberger. Why don’t you stop working so hard at being tough?

The Pleasure Seekers (1964)

I know everything about Spain except Spanish. Twentysomething American Susie Higgins (Pamela Tiffin) arrives in the Spanish city of Madrid and moves in with her old college roommate secretary Maggie Williams (Carol Lynley) and Maggie’s roommate Fran Hobson (Ann-Margret). Still a virgin, Susie is surprised to find both of the other girls have active dating lives. Maggie has recently ended an affair and is now seeing her married boss newsman Paul Barton (Brian Keith) much to the dismay of Paul’s jealous wife Jane (Gene Tierney). At the same time, Maggie’s co-worker Pete McCoy (Gardner McKay) is in love with Maggie but she barely notices him and he’s thinking of going to the bureau in Paris. Fran, an aspiring actress, flamenco dancer and singer, eagerly pursues Spanish doctor Andres Brioñes (Andre Lawrence). While at the Prado Museum, in front of Las Meninas by Velazquez, Susie catches the eye of wealthy playboy Emilio Lacayo (Tony Franciosa) who adds her to his already large group of girlfriends and who is already familiar with Maggie. The three girls spend the summer attending various parties while pursuing and being pursued by the men in their lives including a weekend in Toledo where Susie pretends to fall for Emilio and faints at a bullfight … Life has aged us in a week. Essentially a transplanted musical remake of the previous decade’s Three Coins in the Fountain and helmed by the same director, Jean Negulesco once again for Fox, this moves the action to Madrid and suffers a little since only Ann-Margret among the young leading ladies can sing and dance. She gets a nice entrance from under the covers with the line, Gone native and then has a terrific meet-cute on the street with a scooter-riding medic. Tiffin’s romantic moment is when she’s found by Emilio weeping at the wonderful art in the Prado which she explains away as homesickness. He’s the most heartless corrupt inhuman man who ever lived, Maggie tells Susie. You’ve just been chosen as the next sacrificial lamb. Edith Sommer’s screenplay is also derived from John H. Secondari’s 1952 source novel Coins in the Fountain and it was the second time the screenwriter was attached to a film with Lynley after the controversial Blue Denim. More brittle in tone than its predecessor possibly due to the changing times yet still luxuriating in the surroundings with stunning exterior cinematography by Daniel L. Fapp around Madrid, Marbella, Toledo and Castile, these are not complemented by the obvious studio sets used for the interiors. There’s a bright (and very popular) score by Lionel Newman (and an uncredited Alexander Courage) and it’s a wonderful showcase for the country as well as the performers, not to mention the opportunity to learn about Spanish art. Watch out for Antonio Gades performing a flamenco. He would become famous for his dancing and choreography which are memorialised in Carlos Saura’s Blood Wedding and Carmen in the 1980s. Lynley is posited against Tierney when she becomes The Other (Younger) Woman and they’ve one great bitchy scene together. Sadly this was Tierney’s final feature credit. This is also the final film for veteran actress Isobel Elsom (as Emilio’s formidable mother Donya Teresa) and she also appeared in that year’s My Fair Lady: not a bad way to go out. Just don’t go round thinking that I’m easy because I was once. Lynley’s tussle with Keith is tender, tough and believable. Everybody in Spain dances the flamenco! The theme song performed by an uncredited Ann-Margret is written by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen. She bemoaned the film’s box office failure (it wasn’t the big hit anticipated but did okay) which she said could be attributed to audiences not wanting to see her grow up. Mother told me never to knock. She told me I’d meet more interesting people that way. Tiffin has fun toying with the affections of Franciosa. She had been lauded as the next Audrey Hepburn by Billy Wilder when she featured in One, Two, Three and she would later run away to Rome after shooting Harper with Paul Newman. That’s a hell of a career trajectory. Maybe she was pining for the city as it was in 1953 – like this probably is. We’d like to read Tom Lisanti’s biography of the lovely actress and talented comedienne who died in December 2020. That’s next on our reading list! Look out for Manola Moran as the traffic cop and Vito Scotti as the suave neighbour. The tart response to this film is probably Woody Allen’s decidedly twenty-first century Vicky Cristina Barcelona, an endlessly watchable sorbet revisiting this rather richer fare. The romantic trials and tribulations of twentysomethings with marriage on their minds never get old. The late Lynley was born 13th February 1942 and this is in her honour. Happy Galentine’s Day! All I did was fall in love

The Leather Boys (1964)

I can’t believe we’re spliced. I feel just the same. Working class London cockney teenagers Dot (Rita Tushingham) and biker Reggie (Colin Campbell) get married even though she lives freely under her mother’s (Betty Marsden) roof, encouraged to get together with him. Their marriage soon turns sour. During an unsuccessful honeymoon at a Butlins holiday camp in Bognor Regis, Reggie becomes alienated from the brassy, self-absorbed Dot who gets her hair dyed blonde and is far too vivacious in company. Afterward, they begin to live increasingly separate lives as Reggie becomes more involved with his biker friends, especially the eccentric Pete (Dudley Sutton). Reggie also loses interest in having sex with Dot who never cleans up their bedsit and can’t cook. When Reggie’s grandfather dies, Dot complains that Reggie’s support for his bereaved grandmother has stopped them visiting the cinema. Her boorish behaviour at the funeral and her refusal to move in with Reggie’s grandmother (Gladys Henson) leads to a big row. She leaves, while Reggie remains with his grandmother, who will not leave her own house. He brings in Pete, who has been forced to leave his lodgings, to stay as a lodger with her. The two share a bed. Meanwhile, Dot shows an interest in Brian (Johnny Briggs) another biker. The following day, Pete and Reggie drive to the seaside. Reggie wants them to chat up a couple of girls but Pete has no interest. Reggie now intends returning to Dot, who has hatched a plan to get him back by pretending to be pregnant. Dot is sitting with Brian when she tells Reggie of her supposed pregnancy. Believing he can’t possibly be the father, Reggie accuses Brian and the two men fight. Men? You look like a couple of queers. Dot visits Reggie’s grandmother’s house where she learns that he shares his bed with Pete and argues with the pair of them when she sees how they are living. … People don’t talk like that in real life. Adapted by Gillian Freeman from her 1961 novel (which she published pseudonymously as ‘Eliot George’!), this febrile drama speaks to a London of a certain era before the high rises destroyed communities but according to Tushingham the dialogue the cast were given was out of touch and didn’t exactly roll off the tongue, something they realised when they hung out with London’s real biker subculture. She, Campbell and Sutton improvised much of it in the company of Canadian director Sidney J. Furie who gave them all a couple of days off during the Cuban Missile Crisis (this was shot September-October 1962) because he was so depressed about what seemed like the end of the world. Speaking on Talking Pictures’ documentary Back to The Ace with Rita Tushingham, the leading lady, who was twenty during production, recalls the fun they had on set, the opportunity to visit Butlins in Bognor Regis (which she declares she would never ordinarily have done!) and how innovative Sutton was – he certainly has some fruity lines. When he takes advantage of his friend’s immature marriage it’s like a bomb going off. You look like a bunch of dead roses. He and Campbell died within 6 months of each other in 2018 while Briggs, another TV stalwart, died in 2021. Freeman was on set for several days and according to Tushingham she can be seen in a couple of shots. The Ace Cafe in London’s Wembley suburb on the North Circular, off Beresford Avenue between the Grand Union Canal and Stonebridge Park Depot, is still going strong today as a centre for bikers and rockers, after closing for a period after 1969 and being used as a tyre salesroom. The source novel had been suggested to Freeman by agent/publisher Anthony Blond as a Romeo and Romeo in the South London suburbs and it starts out as a story of an incompatible marriage but with that exploitation title you know it’s heading somewhere more interesting, going beyond the so-called kitchen sink realism tropes to an intersection of sex, class and gay life. Part of the attraction is of course the biking sequences, particularly the road trip to Edinburgh. It’s extraordinary to see how normal the treatment of two young working class men in a relationship could be at this point, given that homosexuality wouldn’t be decriminalised in the UK until 1967. The concluding sequence, when Reggie is finally exposed to the fact of Pete’s gay life at the Tidal Basin Tavern in Silvertown, provides a sharp shock for his character and forces a decision. Up to this point it’s really all subtext and insinuation. It’s certainly notable that it took writing by women to address the topic of homosexuality in the era with Victim (co-written by Janet Green) appearing a couple of years earlier but broaching the issue far more directly. By the time this was released Kenneth Anger’s legendary short film Scorpio Rising would explicitly link bikers with gay sex, receiving its premiered 29 October 1963 at the Gramercy Arts Theater in NYC. Locations for The Leather Boys include: Beresford Aveneue, Park Royal; Haydons Road and the Bethel Church on Kohat Road, Wimbledon; Harbut Road and Southolme Road (now demolished) in Wandsworth; and St Luke’s C of E School (now demolished) in Kingston Upon Thames, as well of course as Bognor Regis where the fresh cinematography of Gerald Gibbs is at its best. That sequence between the lads and Brenda (Valerie Varnam) and June (Jill Mai Meredith) is among the most flavourful in the film. This is beloved cult cinema, both familiar and groundbreaking, fascinating in terms of its position within British screen history, filled with contrasting performance styles and full of the distinctive visual flair of director Furie, still going strong in his ninetieth year. Freeman died in 2019 and aside from some clever novels, ballets and a pioneering study of pornographic literature, is also known for the Robert Altman thriller, That Cold Day in the Park. Her daughters Harriet and Matilda Thorpe are actresses. The Smiths’ 1987 song Girlfriend in a Coma is an homage to the film. Morrissey’s decision to put a Cilla Black cover on the B-side reportedly caused Johnny Marr to leave the band which is why they’re not in the video. We don’t have to live and die together – do we?

At the Ace Cafe in 2007.

The single’s cover featuring playwright Shelagh Delaney

Rita Tushingham today (The Guardian)

Downhill (2020)

It wasn’t nothing – at all. It was something. Pete Stanton (Will Ferrell) and his lawyer wife Billie (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) are holidaying in Ischgl, Austria with their young sons Finn (Julian Grey) and Emerson (Ammon Jacob Ford) when a close call with an avalanche brings all the pre-existing tensions in their relationship to the fore after Pete runs with his mobile phone instead of ensuring his family’s safety. Publicly, Billie says it’s because Pete is mourning his father, dead eight months earlier. Their sexually forthright tour guide Lady Bobo (Miranda Otto) makes them uncomfortable but Billie starts to feel the seven year itch. Pete is in contact with his colleague Zach (Zach Woods) who’s on a whistlestop, country-a-day trip to Europe with girlfriend Rosie (Zoe Chao) and he invites them both to visit without informing Billie who promptly tells them about how he left the family in the lurch when he thought the avalanche was going to kill them. Then she has an assignation with a very forward ski instructor … Dad ran away. The American remake of Swedish filmmaker’s Ruben Ostlund’s fantastic 2014 black comedy Force Majeure is that rare thing – it works of itself, it’s subtle, funny, striking and just the right duration. If its sketchiness occasionally lacks the dark dynamism of the original and doesn’t capitalise on Ferrell in particular, it replaces it with some obvious sexual jokes but never loses the central conceit – the total failure of communications between two grown ups who cannot face the truth of their relationship. We’re in a stock image right now. Louis-Dreyfus’ outburst in front of Zach and Rosie is astonishing – and using the kids to back her up is a step even she eventually concedes is a bit de trop. Ferrell’s riposte – going apeshit in a nightclub off his head – doesn’t play the same but he’s a simpler, selfish beast. This is real battle of the sexes territory. The conclusion – when Billie tries to make Pete look good in front of their sons – suggests that this icy marriage might not even last to the end of the credits. Directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash who co-wrote the screenplay with Jesse Armstrong. Every day is all we have

Like a Boss (2020)

My head isn’t little. It’s just that my breasts are humongous. Mia Carter (Tiffany Haddish) and Mel Paige (Rose Byrne) are friends since they were teenagers and manage a small cosmetics business despite their conflicting ideals. When they run into financial difficulties and need an investor they are persuaded by industry magnate Claire Luna (Salma Hayek) to allow her take a large stake but it involves firing their employee and chief cheerleader Barret (Billy Porter) and his colleague Sydney (Jennifer Coolidge) is rightfully angry on his behalf. Mia and Mel’s friendship is tested to the limit and they realise their ambitions and their relationship are about to rupture when they regroup … You’re not fierced! This light comedy wastes the grand talents of its ostensible leads who are mired in a drama about their unequal friendship while Hayek wins the day with a set of enviable buck teeth and a penchant for golf – unlike most people in business she doesn’t waste time going to the course, she tees off on her desk with predictable breakages. Sentimental, silly and feel good with some nice bursts of song from Mia and Mel this is barely passable as entertainment but you’ll not forget those dentures in a hurry and Lisa Kudrow makes a welcome entrance at the eleventh hour. Written by Sam Pittman & Adam Cole-Kelly from a story by them and Danielle Sanchez-Witzel. Directed by Miguel Arteta. Thank God I’m not alone. I’m glad you’re here

Happiest Season (2020)

Everybody’s story is different. There’s your version and my version, and everything in between.  Abby (Kristen Stewart) plans to propose to her live-in girlfriend Harper (Mackenzie Davis) while at Harper’s family home for the holiday. On the way to their annual Christmas party she discovers Harper hasn’t yet come out to her conservative parents Tipper (Mary Steenburgen) and Ted (Victor Garber). Underachiever but dutiful sister Jane (Mary Holland) is Ted’s tech dogsbody while he’s running for mayor and every move the family makes has to be Instagrammed to make them look normal. Overachiever basic bitch Sloane (Alison Brie) turns up with her husband Eric (Burl Moseley) and two nauseating children who get Abby arrested for shoplifting at the mall. Abby meets Riley (Aubrey Plaza) who is Harper’s high school girlfriend and they quickly make friends as Abby tries to avoid embarrassing Harper in public. She contacts her best friend John (Dan Levy) for advice and he counsels her from a distance while she begins to crack under the pressure of not being part of Harper’s proper family, still living in their closet as Harper avoids coming out. Then John visits just as Ted is about to impress the local dignitaries at their annual party … Just because Harper isn’t ready doesn’t mean she never will be, and it doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you. Co-written by actress turned director Clea DuVall with Mary Holland, this is LGBTQ up the wazoo. We’re in a movie with a Mommie Dearest-type called Tipper so we’re probably nodding to the days of Parental Guidance on vinyl records. A smoothly run surprise-free but enthusiastic entertainment beautifully performed (by all but Davis, who looks very out of place in this ensemble) that was publicised as making gay inroads into festive films. But that was done years ago with the brilliant The Family Stone which is a very amusing well written equal opportunities offender, unlike this, which is really about undoing straight thinking. It’s no accident that the only person speaking common sense is Levy, the token camper; and the father who learns a lesson is gay in real life. The married sister has a black husband which is probably a far bigger issue in reality than the fact that they’re Ivy League law grads who sell hampers and live in an adulterous relationship. There’s more going on here than these family secrets in this clumsy Meet the Parents knock off. The big romcom reference structurally is My Best Friend’s Wedding but we never have the kind of release supplied by that classic although Levy is a breath of fresh air, clearly expressing the film’s true point of view. The earnest virtue-signalling screenplay never seems to explore the real elephant in the room leaving this feeling naggingly incomplete. Maybe it’s a lesbian thing. Ho ho ho hum.  I want you to break out of that closet!

One Way to Denmark (2020)

Aka Denmark. Medical reports indicate you are sick no longer. Unemployed down on his luck Welshman Herb (Rafe Spall) is broke and can’t see his son. Life in his small town is dank and miserable. He gets mugged for his rubbish phone, the neighbours are awful and he has nothing going on. After he sees a TV documentary about Danish open prisons he hits on a plan to stage a heist with a fake firearm and get himself arrested so that he’ll at least have somewhere warm to sleep and regular food. But after hitching a lift and getting smuggled in a container, when he gets there he is befriended first by a dog and then by a wonderful woman Mathilda (Simone Lykke) who brings him to her home for dinner, introduces him to her little daughter and sceptical mother and he rethinks the plan. Then he doesn’t have enough money to pay for a ticket back home … Your father was a pain in the arse tramp but you know what I think? You’ve beaten even him. The premise harks back to Ken Loach with the dole office problems, the family divisions and the general air of hopelessness – but the larkiness and the mates (including Joel Fry and Tim Woodward) enliven Spall’s performance which struggles to rise above the writing by Jeff Murphy. It feels stuck between wanting to break out as a man who potentially could stage a heist a la Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon and the tenets/constraints of social realism – when Mathilda protests Wales must be beautiful, you feel for Herb’s attempts to explain just how dreadful it really is. The juxtaposition of the ease and relative modern luxury of flat Denmark with rainy stony mountainous Wales is nicely established. There are some moments of gentle comedy and the best visual is when Herb is caught and photographed by the police – his mugshot reads ‘A. Herbert’ which raises a chuckle but generally this is as lacking in laughs and drama as the Danish scenery and the relationships don’t ring true. Directed by Adrian Shergold. Incarceration tourism – that’s a fucking new one

Red Joan (2019)

Socialists can have glamour. Joan Stanley (Judi Dench) is a widow living out a quiet retirement in the suburbs when, shockingly, the British Secret Service places her under arrest. The charge: providing classified scientific information – including details on the building of the atomic bomb – to the Soviet government for decades. As the interrogation gets underway, Joan relives the dramatic events that shaped her life and her beliefs. As a physics student at Cambridge in the Thirties, young Joan (Sophie Cookson) is befriended by beautiful Sonya (Tereza Srbova) and her cousin Leo Galich (Tom Hughes) who grew up together after Sonya was orphaned and their relationship is more like that of a brother and a sister than cousins. Joan falls in love with the intense intellectual Leo. He goes to Russia in 1939 and is stuck there when war breaks out. Joan takes a job as assistant to married scientist Prof. Max Davis (Stephen Campbell Moore) at the wartime Tube Alloys project planning an atomic bomb for Britain. Leo returns from the Soviet Union and asks her to pass information but she refuses. She starts sleeping with Max on a trip to Canada where an encounter with Leo (now based in Montreal) sees her refusing once again to be a spy. Back in England she watches horrified the newsreel footage of the bombing of Hiroshima and finds herself sympathetic to the Soviet cause. But she accuses Leo of using her and then finds him dead, an apparent suicide. She tries to make contact with Sonya again … We’re not on the same side any more. Adapted from Jennie Rooney’s titular novel (based on the life of Melita Norwood) by Lindsay Shapero, this spy drama is meticulously made and attractively played by a talented cast. (If Tom Hughes isn’t the next James Bond I’ll eat one of the extravagant hats on display here). However some crucial plot points and revelations are played down in a badly mismanaged script which effectively diffuses any suspense into two near-identical scenes of the police staging a search of the Alloys department to find evidence about the supply of information to the Soviets. The flashback structure doesn’t always come off, the passage of time isn’t demarcated well and the relationship between Dench and her barrister son Nick (Ben Miles) doesn’t hit the dramatic point required: in fact his father’s identity isn’t clear in a parallel plot with Sonya’s pregnancy in the 1930s. The real culprit recruiting people to the Russian side is far too obvious, the tension is flat and it’s paced poorly. Not what you expect from a director of the calibre of Trevor Nunn but the story is intriguing nonetheless and Cookson does well with the role. Beautifully shot by Zac Nicholson. Is anything you ever told me actually true?

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

Wilfrid the Fox! That’s what they call him, and that’s what he is! When Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power) approaches ailing veteran London barrister Sir Wilfrid Roberts (Charles Laughton) to defend him on a charge of murdering a wealthy widow who was enamored of him, going so far as to make him the main beneficiary of her will. Strong circumstantial evidence all points to Vole as the killer. Sir Wilfrid’s nurse Miss Plimsoll (Elsa Lanchester) objects on the grounds of her client’s ill health. Vole’s former wife Christine Helm (Marlene Dietrich) a German refugee provides an alibi for him. But then she turns up in court to testify against him and Sir Wilfrid is contacted by a mysterious woman, who (for a fee) provides him with letters written by Christine to a mysterious lover named Max  …  I am constantly surprised that women’s hats do not provoke more murders. Adapted from Agatha Christie’s 1953 stage play (based on her 1925 short story) by Larry Marcus with the screenplay by Harry Kurnitz (who had written whodunnits pseudonymously) and director Billy Wilder, who chose this project because he so admired its construction. Essentially, this is his Hitchcock film, a brilliantly made comic suspenser with rat-a-tat dialogue to die for and what an ending! And what stars! In a film which hugely improved on Christie’s characterisation, Dietrich smothers the screen with charisma in both her (dis)guises while Power is superb as the smooth charmer he made his own. Lanchester is gifted as many good lines as anyone in the cast including,  Personally, I think the government should do something about those foreign wives. Like an embargo. How else can we take care of our own surplus. Don’t you agree Sir Wilfrid? Her real-life husband of course plays the wily lawyer and he is magnificent: his expressions and business are masterful. There are some welcome familiar faces – John Williams (a Hitchcock regular), Henry Daniell and Una O’Connor, the only original member of the Broadway cast to reprise her role. Beautifully staged and paced, shot by Russell Harlan on sets by Alexandre Trauner with Dietrich costumed by Edith Head, this breathtaking entertainment is a classic film, an object lesson in adaptation with wit and ingenuity to spare. Both Dietrich and Power sing I May Never Go Home Anymore (uncredited) and this is his last completed film. But this is England, where I thought you never arrest, let alone convict, people for crimes they have not committed

Ordinary Love (2019)

How do you say to someone, Don’t die? Joan (Lesley Manville) and Tom (Liam Neeson) Thompson are a happy, long-married couple who enjoy a quiet life until she discovers a mass in her breast and makes an appointment to see a doctor who confirms she has a lump. When it is removed along with many lymph nodes she then proceeds to have chemotherapy. Her recovery is difficult and painful and she befriends the terminally ill teacher Peter (David Wilmot) of her late daughter. Her hair falls out, her temper frays and she and Tom have a major argument when she is at a low point and taunt each other.  They have a nice night together and make love before her double mastectomy. After Peter’s death they prepare for Christmas and decide to invite Peter’s boyfriend to join them … Putting sick people together:  how is that going to make anybody feel better? Even a marriage of kindness and vulnerability can hit a rocky patch. Facing up to a cancer diagnosis can bring out the worst in anyone, even briefly. Asking tough questions of a doctor when it’s not your illness makes you the rude guy; likening your bystander role to that of the person being mutilated and burned in operating theatres and treatment rooms makes you intolerable. For a while. This is also a story about bereavement and a Sixties Modernist house empty of personal touches because a child died, we’re not sure when. Even the goldfish dies. Death is contagious, it seems. And in the midst of that atmosphere somehow a marriage of true friends carries on, through hospital appointments, surgeries, horrific medical solutions and the deaths of other people in the ward. Manville and Neeson are tremendous in a subtle piece of writing by Owen McCafferty. Directed by Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn and filmed in Northern Ireland, with a score co-written by producer David Holmes.  A triumph of intimacy, in the best sense. You’d rather be worse than better