Excellent performances from everyone involved and a very good script: but I chose it thinking it was a comedy, due to a highly misleading blurb on the video box! Not everyone would be so open-minded! In particular I would like to mention the restraint shown by the writer. It would have been so easy to show us exactly how Lenny was a useless father: but we were left to work it out for ourselves, by observing the results of his handiwork ie his unhappy children.
Hollywood struggles endlessly with the "portrayal of minorities" issue. I was very impressed with the sympathetic portrayal of Caribbean and African immigrants in the nursing home. Another gold star for the writer: it would have been so easy to show the nursing home as a living hell: but she resisted the temptation. And she resisted the temptation to demonise Laura Linney's boyfriend, which would have been so easy.
All in all a victory for unfashionable "English" qualities of holding back, showing restraint, etc. Too many films leave too little to the imagination.
Hollywood struggles endlessly with the "portrayal of minorities" issue. I was very impressed with the sympathetic portrayal of Caribbean and African immigrants in the nursing home. Another gold star for the writer: it would have been so easy to show the nursing home as a living hell: but she resisted the temptation. And she resisted the temptation to demonise Laura Linney's boyfriend, which would have been so easy.
All in all a victory for unfashionable "English" qualities of holding back, showing restraint, etc. Too many films leave too little to the imagination.