Sylvia Syms

Whether The Quare Fellow works as a drama at all depends, for Tim Lucas, on Sylvia Syms. He takes the adaptation for a loose and over-sober one, yet watchable for her, and explains the distribution of the load: nearly everyone plays too earnestly, almost at the pitch of sloganeering, and the film turns into an anti-capital-punishment pamphlet, while Syms gives her scenes the sense of danger and the wrenching human ambiguity the picture needs to function as compelling drama. Ryan Gilbey, on a Mike Hodges thriller, says little is given her there, but that her presence and Charlotte Rampling's do that very male film a surprising kindness, like blasts of perfume in an abattoir. Gilbey's stress lies on Rampling.