There's an unusual calmness to this drama that feels
bracingly original. -- Shadows on the Wall
William Nicholson's Hope Gap benefits from a starry cast in the stagey story...Nighy and
Bening are as good as you might expect, though she seems to struggle at times with her accent.
-- Dog and Wolf
Annette Bening and Bill Nighy
are just about worth the price of admission, but Hope Gap lacks enough depth to really leave an impact.
-- Rotton Tomatoes
There's an unusual calmness to this drama that feels
bracingly original, simply because writer-director William
Nicholson never indulges in cheap jokes or contrived histrionics. And yet the story is
provocative, grappling with the issue of separation between family members on a variety of layers.
Not only does this offer delicate, complex characters for the actors to dive
into, but it gives the audience frequent points of identification.
On the southern English
coast, Grace and Edward (Bening and Nighy) have been married for 29 sometimes tetchy years. One weekend when their
son Jamie (O'Connor)
visits from London, Edward hesitantly announces that he has long felt he
and Grace were mismatched, and now he has fallen for another woman (Rogers). Grace simply
refuses to accept this, while Jamie struggles to avoid being manipulated into taking
sides as his parents separate. And all three will need to wrestle with their own self-images as they work
out new realities about their relationships with each other.
It's to Nicholson's credit that he never rushes and also refuses to take
an easy route through this material, maintaining authenticity in each action and reaction. There are no
good or bad guys here, because each character's perspective is so clearly written and played. Even Grace's religious faith has a depth to it that's never simplistic, as does
her work compiling a poetry anthology and Edward's historical expertise, both of which give the film an
underlying literary tone.Indeed, it's thoughtful and
introspective, centring more on understated facial expressions than pointed dialog.
All three actors are terrific, with Bening giving another gorgeous turn as an intelligent woman who doesn't understand why she isn't
easy to live with. Her brittle interactions are packed with telling subtext. Nighy beings his usual impeccably uncertain timing, played for
both comedic and dramatic effect. And O'Connor gets some particularly meaty scenes with
both Bening and Nighy. He's terrific as the sympathetic young man who puts his own issues on the back burner to
help his parents through this transition.
The film is so resolutely unflashy that some audiences might grow impatient with it. The limited cast and settings make it feel rather like a stage play, especially
with so many people spoken of but rarely (or never) seen. But this means that each scene
maintains a quiet grip, offering moving insights into situations that are easy to connect with.
And in the end, there's a solid undercurrent of hope in this
rather heavy, emotionally astute little film.