14 out of 16 people found the following review helpful:
It's more than just a mess
Jane from Somerset,
23rd July, 2006
I feel bad for all the people who worked so hard to make this film look as smart as it does. Emily Watson is always wonderful and Tom Wilkinson's performance is studied and kind of sweet, and although Rupert Everett lacks his usual bi-sex appeal and looks about 90 - well, he's Rupert, isn't he? The cinematography is equally splendid but I kept wondering when the film was going to engage me emotionally. And No, I wasn't asleep. A previous reviewer has summed up the plot (if that's not overstating the case) perfectly - basically a bloke gets knocked off a bike and this woman fancies a tall handsome guy. The the rest of the film tries half-heartedly to work the tenuous link between the two story strands and fails. Naturally I wondered whether I was missing some subtlety - Julian Fellowes being a clever bloke and all that - but I've given it some thought now (and Yes I do have a degree in Film) and my conclusion is that not only is this the biggest dirge I've watched in weeks but it's deeply offensive. It's not that it presents like a TV play - albeit a fabulous-looking one - or that it eventually it depends on such an over-used method of attempting to draw us in emotionally, or even that the storytelling is so curiously detached. That's a method of storytelling like any other and some viewers like that coolness. Partly it fails structurally because the plot collapses into two disconnected halves; the bloke-on-bike part of the narrative doesn't seem to impact in any meaningful way on the central relationship, which is what this film seems ultimately to be about. But whilst that's irritating because it's sloppy film-making it wouldn't be enough to make me hate it as much as I did. My problem with it was that it flags up at the very start that even lives that seem to be perfect have their problems. I confess I was anticipating a problem maybe larger than the everyday one which these unbelievably self-centred people faced, but No - it would appear that the civilised fashion in which they coped with their problem was the lesson for us all. In the first few minutes an innocent man is killed but the film just lets him slip out of the narrative while more important things take place, such as a bit of lump in the throat amongst the priveleged classes. For the latter part of the film it doesn't give the dead man a thought and, sadly, neither do we. No, life's not as good as it looks, is it? You can be riding along, minding your own business, get knocked off your bike, peg it - and no-one gives a toss. And that's what I hate most about this film.
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