HOPE GAP
***
Director: William Nicholson
Screenwriter: William Nicholson
Principal cast:
Annette Bening
Bill Nighy
Josh O’Connor
Aiysha Hart
Ryan McKen
Sally Rogers
Country: UK
Classification: M
Runtime: 100 mins.
Australian release date: 15 October 2020.
Written and directed by William Nicholson, Hope Gap is based on his play Retreat from Moscow, which was first performed at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1999. Nicholson has moved the story to the East Sussex coast of Seaford, known for its dramatic white cliffs facing the English Channel. The script is a searing depiction of the breakdown of a three-decade marriage and the emotional consequences it inflicts on a claustrophobic, uncommunicative family.
Edward (Bill Nighy) is a high school history teacher who lives in a charming, but cluttered, cottage with his wife Grace (Annette Bening), a poetry anthologist. They are approaching their 29th wedding anniversary when Grace is happily surprised by Edward announcing that he has spoken to their adult son Jamie (Josh O’Connor), who lives in London, and that he is coming down to visit them for the weekend. We learn that Josh’s visits are infrequent and, when he arrives, we understand that the ambivalent attitude he exudes is his way of coping with the oppressive atmosphere that pervades the house. Grace is acerbic and takes her dissatisfaction out on Edward, while he spends most of his spare time updating his Wikipedia entries, making Grace cups of tea and generally withdrawing into himself, which only adds to Grace’s bitterness. The gloom increases the next day when, while Grace is attending Mass, Edward reveals the devastating news that he is leaving his wife after years of what he deems to be a thoroughly unsatisfying union, explaining to Josh that he and Grace are simply not suited to one another. As he puts it, he “got on the wrong train.” Immediately after breaking the news to Grace upon her return, Edward takes a suitcase packed with his ‘essentials’ and sets off to start a new life with the mother (Sally Rogers) of one of his students. Before he departs, the shocked, bewildered and disbelieving Grace tries in vain to suggest they have a go at repairing their fragmented marriage, which she agrees is not what it once was, but Edward has made up his mind.
Bening is superb in her portrayal of a woman scorned. She handles the Brit accent well and is thoroughly believable as a slightly dotty middle-aged woman, immersed in the literary world of poetry and often quoting stanzas to evoke her feelings. Nighy, on the other hand, delivers his usual schtick which is pitch-perfect for this role as the subdued, hen-pecked husband who has finally found a means of escape from a relationship that has been suffocating him for years. He tries desperately to maintain a status quo and in one particularly poignant scene, while visiting his son at his digs in London, proclaims that he loves Jamie’s flat and can’t understand why people have the desire to live in bigger spaces, surrounding themselves with stuff they simply do not need. It is perhaps the most revealing aspect of his nature. O’Connor (who delivered an amazing performance in God’s Own Country) plays his slightly morose character to a tee. You never really learn for certain why he seems to be so discontented with life and unsuccessful in forming relationships but it’s hard not to draw the conclusion that the sins of the parents have fallen on the son.
Hope Gap packs a powerful punch in its observation of a failed relationship which is particularly tragic when you take in to account the wasted years. As Grace quotes from the Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet W. B. Yeats…
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
Yeats was writing about the death of an airman, Grace, we suspect, is talking about the death of a marriage. In the final analysis, however, Nicholson is exploring what it means to let go.
Screenwriter: William Nicholson
Principal cast:
Annette Bening
Bill Nighy
Josh O’Connor
Aiysha Hart
Ryan McKen
Sally Rogers
Country: UK
Classification: M
Runtime: 100 mins.
Australian release date: 15 October 2020.
Written and directed by William Nicholson, Hope Gap is based on his play Retreat from Moscow, which was first performed at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1999. Nicholson has moved the story to the East Sussex coast of Seaford, known for its dramatic white cliffs facing the English Channel. The script is a searing depiction of the breakdown of a three-decade marriage and the emotional consequences it inflicts on a claustrophobic, uncommunicative family.
Edward (Bill Nighy) is a high school history teacher who lives in a charming, but cluttered, cottage with his wife Grace (Annette Bening), a poetry anthologist. They are approaching their 29th wedding anniversary when Grace is happily surprised by Edward announcing that he has spoken to their adult son Jamie (Josh O’Connor), who lives in London, and that he is coming down to visit them for the weekend. We learn that Josh’s visits are infrequent and, when he arrives, we understand that the ambivalent attitude he exudes is his way of coping with the oppressive atmosphere that pervades the house. Grace is acerbic and takes her dissatisfaction out on Edward, while he spends most of his spare time updating his Wikipedia entries, making Grace cups of tea and generally withdrawing into himself, which only adds to Grace’s bitterness. The gloom increases the next day when, while Grace is attending Mass, Edward reveals the devastating news that he is leaving his wife after years of what he deems to be a thoroughly unsatisfying union, explaining to Josh that he and Grace are simply not suited to one another. As he puts it, he “got on the wrong train.” Immediately after breaking the news to Grace upon her return, Edward takes a suitcase packed with his ‘essentials’ and sets off to start a new life with the mother (Sally Rogers) of one of his students. Before he departs, the shocked, bewildered and disbelieving Grace tries in vain to suggest they have a go at repairing their fragmented marriage, which she agrees is not what it once was, but Edward has made up his mind.
Bening is superb in her portrayal of a woman scorned. She handles the Brit accent well and is thoroughly believable as a slightly dotty middle-aged woman, immersed in the literary world of poetry and often quoting stanzas to evoke her feelings. Nighy, on the other hand, delivers his usual schtick which is pitch-perfect for this role as the subdued, hen-pecked husband who has finally found a means of escape from a relationship that has been suffocating him for years. He tries desperately to maintain a status quo and in one particularly poignant scene, while visiting his son at his digs in London, proclaims that he loves Jamie’s flat and can’t understand why people have the desire to live in bigger spaces, surrounding themselves with stuff they simply do not need. It is perhaps the most revealing aspect of his nature. O’Connor (who delivered an amazing performance in God’s Own Country) plays his slightly morose character to a tee. You never really learn for certain why he seems to be so discontented with life and unsuccessful in forming relationships but it’s hard not to draw the conclusion that the sins of the parents have fallen on the son.
Hope Gap packs a powerful punch in its observation of a failed relationship which is particularly tragic when you take in to account the wasted years. As Grace quotes from the Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet W. B. Yeats…
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
Yeats was writing about the death of an airman, Grace, we suspect, is talking about the death of a marriage. In the final analysis, however, Nicholson is exploring what it means to let go.