The London film festival closed last night with a stridently gloomy tale of infidelity among the leisured professional classes of 1930s London, from a novel by Rosamond Lehmann.
Thaddeus O'Sullivan directs with a heavy touch; perhaps for this material no other touch is appropriate, or even possible. His players, Paul Bettany, Olivia Williams and Helena Bonham Carter, demonstrate the classic gestures of English period acting. The thin-lipped reproachful glance, the bohemian toss of the head, the casual business with the cigarette case - they are all evidence. Williams's crisp syllables have a very Kristin Scott Thomas-ish ennui, but from the rest of the cast there are lapses into Estuary English now and again.
Bettany plays Rickie, a well-off businessman happily married to the beautiful Madeleine (Williams), but when Madeleine's mixed-up artistic sister Dinah (Bonham Carter) comes to stay, Rickie conceives an amour fou for her that leads to about a decade's worth of grief. The film moves with a heavy tread among the dimly lit interiors of London houses and flats, and the occasional sunny, kite-flying idyll on Hampstead Heath. There's a lot of talk about escaping to Cannes, but the nearest we get to that is the English south coast.
By turns lugubrious and histrionic, this film is a little like Charles Sturridge's version of A Handful of Dust, Neil Jordan's The End of the Affair, with something of Iain Softley's The Wings of the Dove in its metropolitan setting - but without the gaiety and exoticism and mystery that coloured those pictures. It really is very dour, with a cumbersome flashforward-flashback structure, and moments of face-slapping melodrama that are unfortunately judged.
The three principals all have their moments; Williams and Bonham Carter do a very professional job with the sisters, difficult and thankless roles, although the movie does not allow them much space to develop their relationship. Bettany has an excellent moment at the beginning: his silent flash disgust with the fat-headed mediocrity lined up to marry Dinah is the moment he falls in love with her himself. But none of these sterling performers can quite escape the movie's oppressive, downward pull.
