The Oscar nominee wrestles with an ill-fitting
British accent playing a woman whose life crumbles after her husband leaves for another woman
As well-trodden as the subject might be, there remains something horribly compelling about watching the end of a marriage play out on screen, the uneasy little details of what happens when someone switches to I Don’t proving hard to resist. In Hope Gap, Oscar-nominated screenwriter William Nicholson’s second film as director, we’re given an all-too-familiar set-up (husband tells long-serving wife that he’s leaving her for a younger woman) and the stage is set for blistering quarrels, messy untangling and two awards-aiming performances. But despite the clear dramatic potential of the wounds of divorce, proved time and time again by films ranging from An Unmarried Woman to this Oscar season’s Marriage Story, Nicholson fails to give his film the specificity and emotional depth required to make it seem necessary. We’ve been here before and nothing in the film’s 100-minute length truly justifies why we’re back here again.
In the coastal town of Seaford, Grace (Annette Bening) and Edward (Bill Nighy) share a modest life, a comfortably learned dynamic set firmly, perhaps boringly, in place after 33 years together. Grace is gregarious and needy, Edward reserved and serious, and while her desire for more affection and vocal reassurances might cause mild tension, her pleas have become part of the script they’re both used to playing out day after day, year after year. But when Edward urges their son Jamie (God’s Own Country’s Josh O’Connor) to return for the weekend, it soon becomes clear that something is brewing. Grace’s paranoia over Edward’s lack of eye contact and nervousness around her is suddenly, abruptly justified when he announces that he’s leaving her for another woman.