The dramatic portrait of a ruined marriage or relationship often lends itself to an intense performance, allowing the actors to help each other while playing with increased, if not rare, circumstances. Usually this involves harsh words, shouts, crying, thrown objects.
This is the case of Edward (Bill Nighy) and Grace (Annette Bening), the central couple of the writer and director William Nicholson, intimate, sometimes engaging “Hope Gap”. At the start of the film, they are clearly in a late Tennessee Williams style rut: Edward is checked, going through the movements of their daily lives, while checking the facts obsessively on Wikipedia. An agitated grace begs him to show the slightest interest in rekindling their connection and turns to aggressive tactics to attract his attention. (Turning the dinner table over, for example.)
When Edward announces that he is leaving her for another woman only a few days before their 29th birthday, Grace is blind and devastated. Amidst all of this is their grown son Jamie (Josh O’Connor), who must navigate their feelings while confronting how his parents affected his own ability to maintain meaningful relationships.
Edward and Grace are intellectuals – he a schoolteacher, she a retiree who is preparing an anthology of poetry – living comfortably in the picturesque town of Seaford, in England, and the screenplay by Nicholson draws a fine line between flowery and sober. Obvious metaphors comparing war and marriage abound. But while you’ve already seen this portrait, and best of all, Nighy and Bening are so in tune with their characters that such renders by heart are easily forgiven.
Hope Gap
Classified PG-13 for cursing during divorce. Duration: 1 hour 40 minutes.