Movie Review: Their Finest

Their Finest *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Lone Scherfig.

Written by: Gaby Chiappe based on the novel by Lissa Evans.

Starring: Gemma Arterton (Catrin Cole), Sam Claflin (Tom Buckley), Bill Nighy (Ambrose Hilliard), Jack Huston (Ellis Cole), Paul Ritter (Raymond Parfitt), Rachael Stirling (Phyl Moore), Richard E. Grant (Roger Swain), Henry Goodman (Gabriel Baker), Jake Lacy (Carl Lundbeck), Jeremy Irons (Secretary of War), Eddie Marsan (Sammy Smith), Helen McCrory (Sophie Smith).

 

Their Finest is the third movie about Dunkirk I have seen this year – following Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk and Joe Walsh’s Darkest Hour – although, in fairness, it was made before either of those films, and likely on a much smaller budget. It’s a good addition to those two films – showing the British Homefront - and importantly women – during this time. The film wants to be an old fashioned romantic comedy, mixed with the drama of a war picture – and it’s not always an easy mixture of tones. But for the most part, the film is warm and funny and charming – and even if the romance doesn’t quite have the snap of the best screwball comedies from the time period it presents that it clearly wants to, it’s charming enough.

 

The film stars the always charming Gemma Arterton as Catrin Cole – a Welsh lass, in London with her “husband” – artist Ellis (Jack Huston) – who unlike most of the men his age, isn’t in the army, having been wounded in a previous battle. He makes no money, so she’s still working – getting a job at the Ministry of Information – and eventually, getting assigned to work on what amounts to a propaganda film about Dunkrik – to inspire the Homefront. The “true” story aspect of the movie they’re making is most bull – they know it, and don’t really care. Catrin has been hired to write “the slop” – meaning, the woman’s dialogue – since the film will be about two sisters, who steal their father’s boat to help with the evacuation at Dunkirk. Of course, she won’t be “paid the same as the lads” – but it’s not nothing. She finds herself teamed up with Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin) to write the film – and he’s obviously a better match for her than Ellis, and the two quickly fall into a quippy, flirtatious friendship.

 

There is a lot to like about Their Finest. It the film – directed by Lone Scherfig – making her best film since her debut, An Education, back in 2009 and written by Gaby Chiappe, based on a novel by Lissa Evans – and this trio of women certainly want to present the casual, deeply ingrained sexism of the film. They do this well, but don’t make the mistake many modern do, and try to have a revisionist view of history – Catrin stands up for herself, sure, but not in a way out of line for 1940. She wants more money – but doesn’t bat and eye when she’s told she won’t be paid as much as the men for example. Or the way Ellis immediately assumes she’ll come with him when his art exhibition goes on tour – abandoning her own career, even though it pays for everything.

 

It really is the performances that make the film truly work though – a no one is more of a joy to watch than Bill Nighy, playing an age ham of an actor – once famous for a Detective series, now slumming it in anything he can get. Nighy is a delight in every scene he’s in. Arterton is very good too as Catrin – she’s got a warm, open face that makes you immediately root for her. She doesn’t quite have the comedy chops I would have preferred – I was kind of hoping the workplace, flirty scenes would go full Katherine Hepburn/Cary Grant – but neither she nor Claflin are up to that. Instead, theirs is a warmer, more toned down relationship.

 

The movie hums along at a brisk pace, and is mainly a hell of lot of fun. Occasionally, the film introduces some darker moments along the way – and we prepare ourselves from the beginning for not everything to work out. This doesn’t always work – but it works enough of the time to make it work. Their Finest is a fine film – a comfortable, warm funny film that hits the right emotional notes. It never reaches greatness – but it is so consistently good, you don’t much mind.

DVD Review: One Day

One Day * ½

Directed by: Lone Scherfig.

Written by: David Nicholls based on his novel.

Starring: Anne Hathaway (Emma), Jim Sturgess (Dexter), Tom Mison (Callum), Jodie Whittaker (Tilly), Rafe Spall (Ian), Patricia Clarkson (Alison), Ken Stott (Steven), Heida Reed (Ingrid), Romola Garai (Sylvie).

There are things that work in literature that simply do not work when they are adapted into movies. I can think of no better example that One Day, which was a very good book and is now a very bad movie. The screenplay was written by David Nicholls, who also wrote the book, and actually follows the events of the book very closely. All that’s missing is the emotions in the film. I don’t even think I can blame stars Anne Hathaway or Jim Sturgess, who are good looking and at times charming in the movie. But the story of Em and Dex, that so moved me in the book, left me cold when I saw the movie. The biggest mistake the filmmakers made, I think, was thinking that the book would work as a move in the first place.

The movie, like the book, checks in with Emma (Hathaway) and Dexter (Sturgess) every July 15^th for approximately 20 years – from their drunken first meeting, when sex seems to be in the air, to their evolving friendship, to the breakdown of that friendship to the rebuild of something more. As a book, this worked, but as a movie it does not. The characters never really get a chance to breath – and there are times when it seems like 5 years have gone by in the span of 10 minutes. Perhaps a TV miniseries, with each year given a half hour, would have worked. It would allowed the characters the space and time they needed to chart this evolving relationship, and make the characters three dimensional. Instead, we get a dumbed down version of the book. The movie is essentially a Coles Notes version of the book.

We know from the beginning that Emma and Dexter belong together – but something keeps getting in the way. They first meet at a graduation party, so the possibility of a University romance is thwarted as they’re both about to leave. He’s from a rich family, so he’ll soon be gone travelling the world for a few years, before coming back, getting into TV, and falling into a cycle of partying, drinking and drugs. She’s from a poorer family, so takes a job as a waitress at a crappy restaurant, waiting for her writing career to take off, eventually becoming a teacher, before finding success. At every point, either one or the other, or sometimes both, are unavailable, so they remain friends – even though the connection they share is deeper than that.

The movie, quite simply, feels rushed. They have to jam 20 years into just over 100 minutes, so many years are given the shaft, and we never get to know them as individuals, let alone what their relationship is really like. And the movie – either in the writing or editing stage – jettisons much of what makes these characters well rounded, eliminating some of the less sympathetic things each does (Emma’s affair with her married boss, Dexter trying to make a booty call while watching his infant daughter for the night for example were both in the book, but ignored for the movie). As soon as the movie starts to settle down and get into a groove, we flash forward yet another year, and have to start all over again.

Would I have liked the movie had I not read the book? Perhaps a little more than I did, but probably not much. The movie is too scattershot to be truly involving, and there is a real possibility that without having read the book, and as such been able to fill in the blanks the movie leaves, that I would have found it even less satisfying.

Directed by Lone Scherfig, who did such a great job with An Education a few years ago, One Day seems to me to be miscalculated. The movie needed to find a way to take the books literary structure, and make it more cinematic, and they failed miserably. Even something as seemingly small as the way they reveal the date change in every scene annoyed me (way too “cutesy” and groan inducing). Many directors experience a “sophomore slump” after making a successful debut, and I hope that’s all this is for her. One Day, as a movie, simply does not work.

Movie Review: An Education

An Education ****
Directed By: Lone Scherfig.

Written By: Nick Hornby based on the book by Lynn Barber.
Starring: Carey Mulligan (Jenny), Peter Sarsgaard (David), Alfred Molina (Jack), Cara Seymour (Majorie), Olivia Williams (Miss Stubbs), Matthew Beard (Graham), Amanda Fairbank-Hynes (Hattie), Ellie Kendrick (Tina), Dominic Cooper (Danny), Rosamund Pike (Helen), Emma Thompson (Headmistress).

It’s England, 1961, and women go to school not to prepare themselves for future careers, but rather in order to meet a proper husband and settle down. Jenny (Carey Mulligan) has never really questioned this logic, and has spent her entire life preparing to go off to Oxford to study English literature. Her father Jack (Alfred Molina) has it all planned out for her, and she’ll get in if only she can get her Latin marks up. She dreams of a more glamorous life visiting Paris and listening to jazz and going to good restaurants, but she is biding her time.

That is until she meets David (Peter Sarsgaard). She is standing in the rain with her cello waiting for bus to take her home, when he pulls up alongside him in his fancy car. They talk, they flirt, he drives her home, and then she thinks nothing more of it. That is until the day of her recital, which she told David about, when a fancy bouquet of flowers arrives at her door. When she sees him standing in the street a few days later, she goes to thank him. He asks her to join him and his friends for a concert. She agrees. When she tells her parents about it, they say no. That is until they meet David. David is charming and funny, and soon has her parents eating out of the palm of his hand. Jenny for her part likes David, but likes the kind of life he provides her with even more. Why wait to go the fancy restaurants, listen to jazz and visit Paris when she can do so now? What can she really do with a degree anyway? Astonishingly, her parents seem to agree with this logic. We sense, and to a certain extent Jenny senses as well, that there is something not quite right about David. We don’t trust him, but everyone in the movie seems to. Even when we find out how it is that David makes his money, there is little more than a brief fight, before things go back to normal between them. Why mess with a good thing?

An Education is an extremely intelligent movie that sees its characters clearly, and gives even the minor ones real depth and feeling. The whole movie really does rest on Jenny’s shoulders, and newcomer Carey Mulligan delivers one of the best performances of the year. She captures that period in life between adolescence and adulthood just about perfectly, with her innocent looking face, and a wisdom beyond her years. In many ways, she is the most adult character in the movie, one who makes her romantic seeming decisions not simply based on youthful naiveté, but also on the knowledge that there is very little out there for her. Her happiness depends on a man, and in David even if she is not over the moon in love with him, he can provide her the lifestyle that she wants. It is a gutsy performance by Mulligan, who delivers a performance that is astonishing.

The rest of the cast rises to her level. Sarsgaard is supposed to be the adult in the relationship – after all he’s in his early 30s, and Jenny is only 16, but he has a kind of childlike innocence about him. Sure, he is letch, but he truly does seem to believe what he says to her. He is not just some heartless older man taking advantage of a younger girl, but truly believes what he is selling. Domenic Cooper, who plays David’s best friend Danny, is not as innocent, and knows where this is all heading from the beginning, but goes along anyway. Danny’s wife Helen (Rosamund Pike) is delightfully dimwitted. Pike is an actress capable of playing intelligence, but she makes Helen a dolt, and her eyes show that lack of intelligence brilliantly. Alfred Molina is wonderful as Jenny’s father, raging about his daughter going to Oxford, and then seemingly willfully making himself believe in David. Cara Seymour, as Jenny’s mother, seems to have her own ideas, but holds back. It’s not her place to question her husband. In smaller roles, Olivia Williams is heartfelt as Jenny’s teacher who believes in her, and Emma Thompson is strict as the Headmistress who feels sorry for Jenny, but not sorry enough to have a heart.

The screenplay by Nick Hornby and the direction by Lone Scherfig are both heartfelt and engaging. We would suspect a movie about a older man and teenage girl to be either depressing or sultry, but this film is neither. It is a film bursting with life and intelligence. It is impossible not to smile at the end of An Education. Jenny certainly learns a lot about life in this movie.