Second Best

Graham is in his forties, runs a post office in a small town and lives alone. He wants a child and applies to adopt. The boy he is given, James, is ten and is not easy. His mother is dead and his father is in prison and unwell in his mind. James will not let go of that father, because letting go would leave him with nobody. Graham tries to win the boy over, but what actually stands between them is not James's father: it is that Graham never in his life managed to talk to his own. Chris Menges directs the British film; a hundred and five minutes, with William Hurt as Graham and Jane Horrocks, Prunella Scales and Alan Cumming in the cast. Menges had already won two Oscars as a cinematographer.