Celebrated British theatrical director Michael Grandage’s roots show in this adaptation of Bethan Roberts’ 2012 novel, which frequently feels more like an intimate stage production than a film.
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| And two become three: Museum curator Patrick (David Dawson, left) is delighted to discover that visiting couple Marion (Emma Corrin) and Tom (Harry Styles) have a genuine interest in art. |
The kicker, in Ron Nyswaner’s script, is the jolt upon realizing that what seemed like happenstance actually was premeditation.
The story opens in the 1990s, in the East Sussex seaside resort of Brighton. Tom (Linus Roache) and his wife Marion (Gina McKee) argue over her decision to allow Patrick (Rupert Everett), an ailing, long-estranged friend, to live with them while he recuperates from a stroke.
We’ve no clue what prompts the hostility, which Tom refuses to discuss, preferring to retreat to long walks along the massive sea walls that protect the cliffs above (an impressively dramatic image given imposing ferocity by the way cinematographer Ben Davis frames the crashing waves).
Grandage and Nyswaner then slide back to the 1950s. Newly minted schoolteacher Marion (Emma Corrin), enjoying a day at the beach with friends, is taken with Tom (Harry Styles), a handsome young policeman. Sympathetic to her fear of the water, he offers to teach her to swim in the local lido (public outdoor pool), if she’ll broaden his horizons by recommending some good books and classic artists.
She’s charmed by this. A copper, wanting to better himself?
The days pass idly and happily. They visit a gallery, where Tom is drawn to a painting of storm-tossed seas. Patrick (David Dawson), the curator, offers some learned observations; then, sensing kindred spirits, he impulsively offers them tickets to a classical music concert. Tom falls asleep. (So would I.)
They become inseparable, a larkish three musketeers enjoying life to the fullest whenever possible. Patrick’s cultured sensibilities are more perfectly aligned with Marion’s, and his solicitous attention to her begins to feel like something more than friendship, which Tom can’t help noticing (prompting Constant Companion to mutter, “Threesomes never work out”).
But is Patrick actually interested in Marion? Or is she merely an excuse for his close proximity to Tom?
Regardless, Tom proposes to Marion; she blissfully accepts. And is quite surprised when Patrick shows up the morning after their wedding night, promising to cook them a splendiferous supper.
By which point, we viewers are quite certain of what Marion is far too naïve to even imagine.
Ah, but we still don’t know the whole of it…
The dramatic flow of these long-ago events is somewhat muted by the fact that Grandage and Nyswaner periodically bounce us back to the 1990s, and the grim silences that characterize these older versions of Marion, Tom and Patrick. This gimmick prolongs the mystery, but it’s also somewhat irritating.
McKee’s expressions and behavior, as the older Marion, are difficult to read. She clearly feels sorry for Patrick — confined to bed and a wheelchair, and able to speak solely in guttural slashes of half-words — but she could be acting from guilt, or an effort at reconciliation, or merely genuine, kind-hearted concern.
Marion’s half-smiles are welcome, as when she naughtily allows Patrick an occasional cigarette, in direct violation of his daily caregivers’ edicts.
Corrin, so memorably impressive as Diana Spencer in television’s The Crown, is similarly persuasive in the equally challenging role as the younger Marion. Corrin navigates the broadest emotional sweep, as Marion shifts from blissfully radiant — initially so delighted to have two such wonderful men in her life — to shattered and sickened by (in her mind) the ultimate betrayal.
And she would react this way, when confronted with such a thing; Corrin looks like she’ll vomit, or faint, or both. This is 1950s England, when coppers are likely to bust heads — and then make arrests — when confronted with “the love that dare not speak its name.”
Nyswaner’s script has a pointedly telling line, when Marion confides her anguish to Julia (Freya Mavor), a friend and fellow teacher, who — in an effort to heighten awareness — shares her own, similar secret. Marion reacts in shock.
“Five seconds ago, I was one person to you,” Julia sadly responds, “and now I’m something altogether different.”
Dawson’s Patrick is smooth, suave and charming, his easygoing manner and affable smile a genuine reflection of his nature … although his eyes, at times, suggest much deeper wells of thoughts and desires. The younger Tom initially seems equally kind and attentive, until we realize that Styles has been subtly adding a degree of guile and manipulation.
Everett’s older Patrick is the ultimate tragic figure: forlorn, beaten, helpless and enraged by having come to such a pass.
Roache’s older Tom is just this side of a blank slate: so one-dimensional that he’s genuinely annoying. One cannot imagine why Marion has continued to live with him.
This is a very slow-burn drama, apt to appeal mostly to viewers sympathetic to the richly varied colors of love; others likely will find it a total snooze. But as also is true of Roberts’ novel, Grandage’s film is a reminder of how awful things once were — and still are, in certain quarters — and of the crucial importance of honesty.
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