Hope Gap

Grace and Edward have been married twenty nine years. She talks, he stays quiet; it has been like that for years. Their son Jamie comes home for the weekend. That weekend Edward says he is leaving; there is someone else and he has decided to go. Grace did not expect it. Jamie is caught between them and both parents expect him to take a side. William Nicholson writes and directs. Annette Bening plays Grace, Bill Nighy plays Edward and Josh O'Connor plays Jamie. Nicholson is known as a screenwriter, and the narrative comes out of his own family; he turned his parents' separation first into a play and then into this film. The subject is not the separation but how it is told. Grace describes it as a betrayal, Edward as a release, and the film gives both equal time. The cliffs on the south coast of England are used as the setting and the title comes from there. Annette Bening's character is not likeable; her talking and her insistence on being right make the house unliveable, and the film shows that plainly. Its limit is its origin on stage; the scenes rest on talk and the narrative is physically static. Who it is for: viewers who like British family drama and performance driven films. Who it is not for: little happens, the pace is slow, and the narrative holds no surprise.