At its best, this drama is a bit like Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon,” the lovely tune that plays over the closing credits. It’s kind of quiet, but kind of light, buoyant where its simplicity might elsewhere seem somber. Jim Broadbent, star of every third English movie, and Lindsay Duncan, best known for her UK TV roles, play Nick and Meg, teachers celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary in Paris. Coming from the director-writer team, Roger Michell and Hanif Kureishi, who did Venus, the 2006 Peter O’Toole charmer, it might almost be the next installment in Richard Linklater’s Before series (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight) for its emphasis on talk over plot, and for the fact that the couple in question have reached the empty-nester stage of life. But where, at least in Before Midnight, the Julie Delpy-Ethan Hawke couple have loud arguments that can boil over, the characters here simmer. What for another couple might lead to an hour of not speaking, or a ruined evening, these two let roll by, though without forgetting. Only Jeff Goldblum, as Nick’s admiring American friend, supplies a lot of volume. (I actually missed some of Nick and Meg’s dialogue for the lack of same.)
Besides Drake’s contribution, a Jeremy Sams’s piano score supplies a light jazz background that seems appropriate for a film that is too serious to be called fun, but that has enough amusing moments not to be ponderous.
IMDb link
viewed 4/2/14 at Ritz 5 and posted 4/2/14
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