Category: Romance

Arrival (2016)

Amy Adams tries to build an understanding with Earth’s visitors in this thinking man’s sci-fi film

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Amy Adams (Louise Banks), Jeremy Renner (Ian Donnelly), Forest Whitaker (Colonel Weber), Michael Stuhlberg (David Halpern), Tzi Ma (General Shang), Mark O’Brien (Captain Marks)

Aliens in Hollywood movies don’t often seem to mean well. For every ET you’ve got a dozen Independence Day city destroyers. But few films have really dealt directly with the complexities that might be involved in engaging with a species for the first time. How would we talk to them? How could we find out what they want?

Those are the questions that Dr Louise Banks (Amy Adams), the world’s leading linguist, has to juggle with after she is called in by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) to establish communication with the inhabitants of an alien ship, one of 12 that have appeared across the globe. Working with physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), Banks strives to build trust and a basis for common language with the aliens. Throughout, she must deal with her military superiors’ lack of understanding of the painstaking nature of her work, the paranoia and fear of the nations of the world, and her own increasingly intrusive dreams and memories.

This is grown-up sci-fi, directed intelligently by Denis Villeneuve, whose confidence and artistry behind the camera oozes out of every shot. It’s a film that wants us to think, and urges us to consider the nature of humanity. Communication between humans and the “heptapods” is the film’s obvious focus, but it is equally interested in demonstrating how distrust and paranoia undermine how we talk to each other. Not only is this in the clashes between nations, but on a smaller scale by the communication between military and science, the uniforms in charge largely failing to grasp the slow and painstaking nature of Banks’ work. On a personal and emotional level, we see the slow growth of understanding between Banks and Donnelly, their increasing ease with each other as they break down the barriers between them, and between humanity and the aliens.

Far from the bangs and leaps of inspiration that science normally sees itself represented by onscreen, this film attempts to follow the methodical process of building an understanding of a concept from nothing, and the careful hours of work that underpin sudden revelations. The film is very strong on the complexities of linguistics and the difficulty of conveying exact translations, including intent, context and meaning, from one language to another. In fact it’s a wonderful primer on the work of linguistics experts, offering a fascinating breakdown of how language is understood, translated and defined between two groups without a common tongue.

This is also helped by making the aliens truly alien: I can’t remember a set of Hollywood aliens as otherworldly as these are. Not only is their language completely different (based on symbols and strange echoes like whale song), but physically they bear no resemblance to humans at all (I confess that I was momentarily distracted here, as their tentacles and residence in a gas-filled box rather reminded me of The 465 in Torchwood: Children of Earth). They lack clear arms, legs or even faces. Their technology is advanced and immediately unsettling. Jóhann Jóhannsson’s wonderfully eerie and imposing score brilliantly helps to capture this otherworldly sense, as does the crisp photography and unique production design of the alien ship. The film walks a brilliantly fine line between wonder at the aliens and a sense of unsettling dread that means we (like the characters) are never comfortable in making assumptions about their motives.

Much of the film’s success as a viewing experience also depends on knowing very little about it. For me this film delivered one of the most effective late-plot re-evaluations I’ve seen: I had no inkling of this gear shift, or how a late piece of information demands that we adjust our understanding of everything we have seen so far in the film. This is actually one of the best done examples I’ve seen of a twist (calling it a twist seems somehow a little demeaning, as if this was a Shyamalan thriller, but a twist it is) – I in no way saw it coming, but it suddenly makes the film about something completely different than you originally believed it would be. I won’t go into huge details, but the film raises a number of fascinating questions around pre-determination and fate that challenge our perceptions of how we might change our lives if we knew more about them. To say more would be to reveal too much, but this twist not only alters your perceptions of the films but deeply enriches its hinterland.

I would say the film needs this enrichment as, brilliant and intellectual as it is, it’s also a strangely cold film that never quite balances the “thinking sci-fi” with the “emotional human drama” in the way it’s aiming for. Part of this is the aesthetic of the film, which has a distancing, medical correctness to it – from sound design to crisp cinematography – and which, brilliant as it is, does serve to distance the viewer emotionally from the film. Despite the excellence of much of the work involved, I never quite found myself as moved by the plights of the characters, or as completely wrapped up empathetically with Adams’ character, as the film wanted me to be. While the ideas in the film are handled superbly, it doesn’t have quite as much heart as the plot perhaps needs to strike a perfect balance.

What emotional force the film does have comes from Amy Adams. It’s a performance that you grow to appreciate more, the longer you think about it. It’s a subtle understated performance, soulful and mourning, that speaks of a character with a deep, almost undefinable sense of loss and sadness at her core. You feel a life dedicated to communication and language has only led to her being distanced from the world. Adams is the driving force of the film – though very good support is offered from Renner as a charming scientist who also convinces as a passionate expert – and the film’s story is delivered largely through her eyes, just as the aliens’ perception of humanity becomes linked to her own growing bond with them. I will also say that Adams also has to shoulder much of the twist of the film – and it is a huge tribute to her that she not only makes this twist coherent but also never hints at the reveal until the film chooses to.

Arrival is a film that in many ways is possibly easier to respect than it is to love: but I find that I respect it the more I think about it. It does put you in mind of other films – the aliens have more than a touch of 2001’s monolith to them and Villeneuve’s work is clearly inspired by a mixture of that film and Close Encounters. But this is a challenging, thought-provoking piece of work in its own right and one that I think demands repeat viewings in order to engage the more with its complexity and the emotional story it is attempting to tell. It may well be that on second viewing, removed from puzzling about the mystery in the centre, I will find myself more drawn towards it on an emotional rather than just intellectual level. That is something I am more than willing to try and find out from a film that I think could become a landmark piece of intelligent sci-fi.

Brief Encounter (1945)

Love and life at a crossroads: Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in one of cinema’s greatest love stories

Director: David Lean

Cast: Celia Johnson (Laura Jesson), Trevor Howard (Dr Alec Harvey), Stanley Holloway (Albert Godby), Joyce Carey (Myrtle Bagot), Cyril Raymond (Fred Jesson), Everley Gregg (Dolly Messiter)

Brief Encounter is often hailed as one of the most romantic films ever made. This is astonishing really, as it’s actually a film about an affair where two married people with young families toy seriously with the idea of walking out on these families to run off together. Put like that, you can imagine thinking, how could I sympathise with this situation? The film’s magic is that you do.

Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) is a middle-class woman, married to loving but dull husband Fred (Cyril Raymond) with two young children. Every Thursday, Laura travels to Milford for the day for shopping and a trip to the cinema. One day she meets Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard), a married doctor who works one day a week at the Milford hospital. Enjoying each other’s company they agree to meet again, but quickly find their ease and comfort with each other developing into a deeper relationship – with infidelity on the cards.

Brief Encounter in many ways gets close to a perfect film. Its impact on people seems to be pretty near to universal. Perhaps because the film speaks to a certain universal truth: who hasn’t, at some point in their life, found themselves attracted to someone they shouldn’t be, and who hasn’t been tempted at some point to throw their life up in the air and embrace something new and exciting? The film carefully presents these temptations in a totally non-judgemental and empathetic way, and acknowledges the romance and enticement of the forbidden.

The film also perfectly captures the magical discovery of falling in love, the tingling excitement of every second spent in the company of that new found love-interest. It’s there throughout Johnson and Howard’s interactions: their smiling eagerness, the way their eyes light up and body language opens out when they speak to each other (compare to how closed off they are when speaking to anyone else). There is a relaxed pleasure about it – an innocence and spring-time joy that makes you forget that this is a couple toying with shattering their families in a passionate affair. There is a reason the film is set in a train station – it has a transient, chance-meeting sense about it, with the station being a “neutral” ground far away from both characters’ homes where it is easier for them to pretend to be “other people” – it removes many of the possibilities for the film’s would-be affair to be perceived as sordid or wrong.

The plot also hinges effectively on fleeting moments of chance that cause either joy or pain (usually the latter). Most obviously we have Doll’s interruption of their final moments – enough to make any of us scream at the screen – but their very first meeting is caused by the random chance of a piece of grit flying up at the right place at the right time. The relationship is only unconsummated due to Alec’s friend returning to a flat early (and his sneering contempt for Harvey’s planned adultery is the only scene where a third party shatters the illusion of a perfect romance that could cause no harm to anyone). The lovers encounter friends and have to concoct unconvincing spur-of-the-moment reasons for why they’re together. It’s this constant feeling of chance and chaos around the edges of the drama that provides the sense of danger that keeps this relationship alive and empathetic.

Laura and Alec are grown-up and intelligent adults, aware of the consequences of their actions, and the film keeps this constantly at the forefront. Part of the reason we can “relax” into this would-be affair is that we have already seen at the start that the relationship will end, meaning we can simultaneously root for this meeting of hearts and minds, while knowing that no one (other than the couple themselves) will be hurt. Imagine if the film had opened with Fred’s tear-stained face? Would all the romantic boat rides and illicit kisses on a country bridge still have made us feel warmly towards Laura and Alec?

Watching this film again, I actually started to think about how Lean developed as a director from these smaller scale, script-led Coward films to the sweeping, grandiose epics that he is best remembered for today. In Brief Encounter his command of mise-en-scene is so complete – and in Celia Johnson he has such an expressive actor – that the dialogue in voiceover (for all of Johnson’s excellent delivery) often feels superfluous; it tells us nothing that simply looking at the picture hasn’t already communicated.

Look at the scene after Laura flees Alec’s borrowed apartment: Johnson’s stunned, panicked, guilty face is the camera’s focus, as we follow her, head down, moving fast through the streets without aim or direction, the score swelling behind her. Later she sits smoking on a park bench. Her conflicted emotions of guilt, shame and shock that she should do such a thing are clear, not just from the acting, but also the construction of the scene. Although the score helps, you could watch the scene silent and know exactly what was happening and what Laura was thinking about. But the film continues with Laura’s voiceover as she details everything her face is telling us. Take a look at the sequence here (64minutes and 42 seconds in):

Was it at points like this that Lean started to move towards his later films, where the language of cinema took the place of the language of speech? Later he would place so little information about the real Laurence of Arabia in that film’s script that nearly everything is interpreted from O’Toole’s expressive face. I think you can see the roots of it here – brilliant visual touches that capture the immediate intimacy between Alec and Laura, or the way the camera holds itself steadily on Laura while she prepares her evening make-up and calmly lies for the first time in her life to her husband. In the entire construction of this film, its detailed and perfectly paced building of a sense of Greek tragedy around a slim story, you see a master film-maker, a genius of visuals and compositions. You don’t need the extra explanation, it’s all there on the screen for us.

Camera choices are sublime: look at the staging of Alec/Laura’s final meeting: first time round, the camera moves lightly past them, focused on Holloway and Carey’s characters. Despite that, we get an overwhelming sense that something important is happening just out of shot – reinforced when Dolly interprets them. Flash forward to the end of the film, as the scene is restaged – now Dolly practically forces herself into the frame (in one great shot, the camera watches Alec leave through the door before Dolly literally walks in front of the shot to sit down at the table). The careful, comfortable composition of Alec and Laura sharing the frame together – and the way she never does so with her husband (until the very end of the film) alone tells us visually as much about the relationships as any dialogue could.

What is fascinating is that this is remembered by so many people as being about the control of emotions. Watching it again, I remembered how far this was from the truth. Alec and Laura speak their feelings for each other with an almost wild abandon once the floodgates are open – Alec’s expression of devotion while they dry off in the boat house is as frank and heartfelt a declaration of love as you are likely to hear. Laura’s emotions – her joy and her pain – are not only written across her face, but spilled out across the screen in voiceover. The characters button this up when with others, but alone they are as high on love as a pair of first-date teenagers. Throughout, the writing of their dialogue is spot-on – from their initial slight shyness to the way their lines interlock and complement each other. Again, compare how Laura talks with Alec – naturally, freely, each line developing smoothly from the other – with how she communicates with everyone else in the film (haltingly, distant, talking at cross purposes, subject matter changing from line to line). I could do without chunks of the voiceover, but the dialogue is sublime, both in its style and its construction.

You can’t go far wrong either when you have actors as good as this, with such chemistry. Celia Johnson gives one of the most perfect, iconic performances in the history of cinema. Does she strike a wrong note once? I’ve already waxed lyrical about her expressiveness – but watch her in every scene, you always know what she is thinking. Her understanding of Laura is complete, and she brilliantly shows throughout the torn loyalties between the life she has and the one she could have – between making herself happy and doing “the right thing”. The film is really her story and Johnson creates a character I can’t imagine someone not relating too. Her voice is in a way ripe for parody with its crisp 1940s tones, but along with her beautifully expressive eyes under the surface of that stiff-upper lip sharpness, there are wonderful beats of emotion and desperation.

Trevor Howard is equally good as Alec Harvey – it’s amazing to think this was only his second film role. Harvey is a character we are slightly distanced from in comparison with Laura – it’s arguable that, since the film is delivered through Laura’s voiceover, we only see him (except in the opening moments) as Laura perceives him. Howard has a charm, a gentleness and an honour about him that make him a man we can relate to, but the actor also brings an edge of danger to him that make him a plausible would-be adulterer. Early in the film it’s Alec who makes the running, pushing for dinners and bunking off work for cinema trips. It’s he who sets up the possibility of consummating the relationship, and makes the first formal declaration of affection. In fact you can see, in that slight edge that Howard gives it, why some have plausibly argued that Harvey could be a serial seducer. But that’s subtext – like Johnson, Howard is perfect.

Brief Encounter is one of those films that rewards constant reviewing. It’s a brilliantly told, tightly structured and beautifully shot story that is also deeply moving and emotional, because it feels so real. It’s possibly one of the best expressions on film of falling in love, and all the excitement and danger that it brings. Perhaps that is why it moves us, and continues to have such appeal – all of us have had that excitement of spending every moment you can with someone else, of sharing everything with them. It’s an addictive and exciting feeling, and this film captures it perfectly. It also moves us because, deep down, we like sad tragic endings – they have real impact when we have related so strongly to the characters, and they stick with us. Because, you always remember when you have been heartbroken – and seeing it so vividly brought to life by Celia Johnson in a truly great performance helps to make this film permanently rewarding.

Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan struggle with their obvious discomfort in this ghastly, hellish, joyless film

Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson

Cast: Dakota Johnson (Anastasia Steele), Jamie Dornan (Christian Grey), Eloise Mumford (Kate Kavanagh), Jennifer Ehle (Carla Wilks), Marcia Gay Harden (Dr. Grace Trevelyan-Grey)

For some reason, about ten years ago everyone got wildly turned on by reading a series of books ripped off from Twilight, which followed the adventures of a timid student and her induction into the world of sexual spanking by a controlling billionaire. It was like tepid porn you could read in the open and talk about in the office. The entire genre of “mom porn” (now to be spotted in every supermarket book section) was born.

Anyway, it came at last (so to speak): the film of the book. With it came EL James’ atrocious dialogue (full disclosure here: I’ve not read the book, but I looked up some quotes and read the synopsis on Wikipedia, so I reckon that’s probably better than reading it), paper thin characters and event-less action. Along, of course, with the sex. Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) is a young student who encounters Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), a mysterious billionaire. He likes spanking. She’s never done anything down there (“You’re a virgin”, “yes”, “but you’ve done other stuff?” “no” “oh my god” – goes one classic exchange between the two). Bless, she doesn’t even know what a butt-plug is. I guess she will find out.

I’ll be blunt. This is possibly one of the worst, most offensive, horrible films I’ve ever seen. I’m actually rather angry I watched it. Nearly everything about it stinks: the acting and film-making craft are as vile, tasteless and revolting as the ideas behind it. First and foremost, Jamie Dornan honestly looks like he vomited with shame after completing every scene. Dakota Johnson does a reasonable job with a character who is as well-developed as the stains on Grey’s bedding, but since she is merely required to look alternately sad, timid or (god help us) “aroused” (expressions which bear a distinct resemblance to each other, mostly involving biting her lip and opening her eyes really wide beneath her “frumpy geek girl” fringe), she hardly needed to be much more than competent to bring this sad excuse for a protagonist to life. Ehle and Harden hopefully picked up big paycheques for selling their talents to this dreck.

As a relationship film, this is awful. Imagine Pretty Woman, but if Richard Gere could only get it up by smacking Julia Roberts in the mouth. It’s that charming. Factor in if their sex scenes had been shot with all the creativity of high-end porn, with the actors unconvincingly panting and sighing throughout and you get an idea of how sexy this film is.

The original author of the novels, EL James, had unprecedented creative control, and the tension between her demands for the film and the film-makers’ ideas is evident throughout. The film is a real hotch-potch: James had rejected one script by Patrick Marber (of Closer fame) for deviating too strongly from the book. That script presumably attracted Taylor-Johnson’s involvement as director – she wanted, it seemed, to make a serious relationship drama. EL James wanted an illustrated edition of her book. While I respect James’ insistence to get what she wrote on screen, I would also say she’s not a film-maker, and has no idea about what works on screen. What ends up here is a compromised mess – about half a Taylor-Johnson/Marber style “serious exploration of an unsuitable relationship” film, half James’ soft-porn spankathon shit.

The sex is one of the main problems with this film – there is nothing remotely enjoyable, titillating or even amusing about the joyless couplings in this film. Jamie Dornan looks like he’d rather be literally anywhere else during the sequences, a constant expression of embarrassment behind his eyes. The poor guy looks like he’s desperate to take Anastasia home to meet his mother. Both the sex and the spanking in this film are pretty tame, but he sets about both with a grim eyed determination, as if he was already thinking of getting back to his trailer and phoning his real life wife and kids. In fact, the film would make a perfect cold bath – I simply can’t imagine ever wanting to have sex again watching this film, let alone indulge in any of the “erotic” games it features, which it manages to make look as enticing as root canal.

The big thing missing from this film is any fun whatsoever. A large slice of the blame for this must go to Taylor-Johnson. I suspect she wanted to make a film that was a serious examination of relationships, and the unexpected dangers desire can lead us into. However, she was pushing against the source material (and the all-powerful author), and her efforts were always going to be doomed. This is taken from a book that is, to put it bluntly, a piece of sub-Cinderellesque shit with extra spanking. What it really needed was not an artistic approach, but more of the camp “I know this is rubbish, just enjoy it” direction – in other words, it needed an efficient (even knowing) hack director, not an artist at the helm.

By trying to look at the dynamics of power relationships in a serious way at least part of the time, Taylor-Johnson (assisted by Dornan’s fantastically awkward performance) manages to highlight what a humourless, manipulative, controlling wanker Christian Grey is. By any objective measures, he is clearly a controlling and abusive boyfriend. Filmed entirely seriously, with moody music in the background half the time and none of book-Anastasia’s laughably cheesy descriptions of the latest antics of her “inner goddess” (usually to be found dancing the hula or turning cartwheels), this film throws into sharp relief what is actually happening in this story: an experienced, controlling man finds a naïve, inexperienced younger woman and coerces her into servicing his desires. The “negotiation” talk is one of the most uncomfortable examples of this: “we can negotiate” says the man who holds all the cards, to the girl who doesn’t even know what she can or should ask for.

Throw in the fact that he is multi-billionaire who gets his rocks off by fucking his girlfriends the same way he (presumably) fucks his business rivals, only makes him seem even more of an unredeemable asshole. His ostentatious gifts of new cars, his controlling forbidding of Anastasia to drink on her nights out with friends, his insistence on coming to remove her from one of these nights out when she’s only met him twice and has not asked for his help or his presence, his demand for her to sign a contract, his following her to her parents’, his not taking no for an answer… Need I go on? The more the film focuses on these darker sides of the relationship, the more you look at Grey less as a messed up Prince Charming, and more like an abusive predator.

Grey is also clearly purchasing his new part-time live-in mistress like a piece of meat, and he treats her like a piece of property throughout. Tragically (and I’m not sure the film realises this) Anastasia is so sweet and vulnerable she seems to think that she just has to accept all this spanking and rope game malarkey as just part and parcel of having a boyfriend (“Do we still get to go to the theatre” she rather sadly asks when enquiring into the new rules of their relationship). I don’t get overwhelmed with sympathy with her though: every hesitancy is overcome by a new extravagant display of Grey’s wealth. The film does build towards her walking away – but she hardly does this with any decisiveness. Despite the film’s best efforts, she in no way comes across as an equal partner or a strong character.

So the film’s serious tone is a major problem in that sense. It’s also a major problem as Taylor-Johnson just ends up turning this into a totally dull, lifeless film. Almost nothing happens in this film. Trivial events and dull conversations are interrupted occasionally by the actors rutting with all the passion of two people eating a microwave meal. The film’s sex scenes are, incidentally, totally unbalanced: throughout his session in the red room, we see endless shots of Johnson’s assets but Dornan politely keeps his jeans on almost throughout. The camera’s perfunctory, joyless efforts to capture Johnson’s nipples in every scene it can (never miss a chance to edge them in at the corner of a shot!) just builds this feeling of no-one enjoying their work, but shovelling onto the screen what the readers might want so they can all go home.

The only way this fucking piece of garbage could ever have really worked on the screen is if someone had basically accepted it for what it was: a steaming pile of manure written to titillate those scared of searching the Internet for real porn. If it had been treated like the ghastly, campy piece of crap it was, then the film itself could have been the ultimate “bad” film. But Taylor-Johnson’s attempt to create a serious relationship drama crashes up against EL James’ dire, pig-eared prose and depthless characters, and instead creates a film both tedious in the extreme and offensive.

Honestly, not even as a camp watch will this work – it is dull, horrible and awful. It thinks it’s a dark Cinderella tale. It’s just a dark story about a horrible man. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

An Education (2009)

First love: Never as smooth as you think it will be

Director: Lone Scherfig

Cast: Carey Mulligan (Jenny Mellor), Peter Sarsgaard (David Goldman), Dominic Cooper (Danny), Rosamund Pike (Helen), Alfred Molina (Jack Mellor), Cara Seymour (Marjorie Mellor), Emma Thompson (Miss Walters), Olivia Williams (Miss Stubbs), Sally Hawkins (Sarah), Ellie Kendrick (Tina)

The education in question is the first sexual relationship of a girl who is 16 going on 17. Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is a schoolgirl and prospective Oxford candidate who finds herself winning the attention of charming older man David (Peter Sarsgaard). Jenny is swept off her feet by the world of classy bars, art and culture David introduces her to and begins to lose interest in her literal education: if all education can do is turn women into either lawyers’ wives or teachers what is the point?

Strangely for a film based on a man approaching middle-age taking advantage of a naïve and excited teenager, it’s strangely cosy and charming, with the whiff of “safe” family viewing. Nothing wrong with that of course, but the whole confection is just a little too slight, a little too well packaged, a little too carefully and thoughtfully put together to really leave a lasting impression. Instead it’s an enjoyable enough 90 minutes which doesn’t really have anything that stays with you.

What it does have going for it above all is the marvellous lead performance from Carey Mulligan. At the time best known for appearing in the Blink episode of Doctor Who, Mulligan cements her early promise by demonstrating what a charismatic and vibrant performer she is. Jenny delights in the ease with which David deceives everyone without it ever occurring to her that he might be lying to her, and this teenage arrogance could easily be smackably annoying – but Mulligan makes her deeply engaging and loveable. You want to protect her from making an irrevocable decision that will ruin her life at 16 (sort of the opposite to Bella in Twilight). But Mulligan’s endearingly engaging performance sweeps the audience up into Jenny’s fascination with the exciting life David seems to be offering, and makes you understand why she believes it to be a viable option. She’s a radiant centre to the film and it’s almost impossible to imagine it working at all without her.

It is in fact very well-acted throughout. Sarsgaard underplays the role, suggesting the underlying shallowness and weakness to David which is far clearer to the audience than the characters. The supporting cast are knock-outs: Rosamund Pike is hilarious as a sweet airhead, Alfred Molina embodies the gullibility of the striving middle-classes mixed with great reserves of unspoken love and affection, Olivia Williams is terrific in an underwritten part as Jenny’s concerned teacher.

It’s strange watching the film to see how it romanticizes the sort of behaviour that, if we encountered it today, would be denounced as grooming at best, paedophilia at worst. In fact, the film soft-peddles a lot of the unpleasantness of its characters: David and Danny, it is clear, are conmen and swindlers, though I suspect the film wants us to think of them more as charming rogues. I suppose it’s the impact of seeing the story from Jenny’s perspective, but some more outside commentary would perhaps have been interesting: it also might have been more interesting to see Jenny actually having to deal with the moral consequences of some of the actions that happen around her.

This is a slight affair, almost a shaggy dog story. There are many more things it could have explored (the swindling career of David, the role of women in the 1960s, the changing perceptions of “blue stockings” and their career options) but instead it settles for being a charming period piece. It makes no secret of the fact that, deep down, we are not meant to trust David and nothing in the plot ever really surprises you. It’s a gentle amble through an ill-advised teenage romance. But, despite all that, it’s very well acted and Carey Mulligan proves she was set to become a star.