Anna Welles (Charlotte Rampling), a glamorous shop assistant in her 60s, is estranged from her husband. She is compelled by her daughter Emmy (Hayley Atwell) to “get out there”. This translates to a number of speed dating nights which Anna attends.
If only more directors realised that not every inch of the screen needs to be filled with narrative propelling action.
D.C.I. Bernie Reid (Gabriel Byrne) should really have let someone pick up the call, but still investigates when a suspicious death is reported in the wee small hours of the morning. While in the estate where the crime took place, Anna catches his eye. She nips into his lift to retrieve a child’s froggy umbrella (a finer macguffin you could not hope to find), and he takes it upon himself to get to know her better.
Director Barnaby Southcombe (Rampling’s son) has a wonderful eye for perspective. He makes good use of the widescreen, giving every shot a real sense of physical depth. If only more directors realised that not every inch of the screen (nor indeed the script) needs to be filled with narrative propelling action. It serves to make the film more airy, and much easier to engage with, than if we were brought nose-to-nose with every character, as can often happen in these sort of thrillers. The few times we do find ourselves in claustrophobic environments, the actors are obscured somehow, by a pillar or a cupboard door, and this serves to reinforce the idea that we might not be seeing the whole story just yet…
Byrne’s rugged detective is an interesting play on the old-school Columbo style…
The gentle, but faintly sinister score was provided by K>i<D, but it is Richard Hawley (coming on like a British Leonard Cohen here) who really accentuates the piece. There is not much to say about Charlotte Rampling’s acting here: with no intended disrespect, she seems to have forged a fine career playing Charlotte Rampling. Throughout the film her character reveals itself to be complex, but only in retrospect, through the virtue of flashbacks. That’s not to say that she is ineffective, this was just never going to be a particularly challenging role, it would appear.
Byrne’s rugged detective is an interesting play on the old-school Columbo style. That you never really get a handle on whether he’s getting TOO attached to Anna, is no bad thing. If his character Bernie seems unsure, why should we have a clearer picture? It’s refreshing to have a London tower block-based thriller with a distinct lack of lurking knife youths. Similarly, it’s good to see a femme fatale and her pursuer do their ‘little dance’ without resorting to oversnappy and overcooked repartee. This is how to do a murder mystery.
httpvh://youtu.be/zqoGD7llgA4