Writing, mostly.

Two people enter the final phase of their relationship and discover a vitriolic side to each other as they engage in increasingly nasty ways to get at one another. If you can find the humour in that then I’d like to borrow your silver lining sometime because all I felt was depressed. Sporadic “funny” moments aside where the script dealt with stereotyped observations of what men/women want out of a relationshp, the film get caught up in the ugly side of the characters. There are several too many scenes of out and out fighting where the supporting cast looks on, pretty much as the audience are forced to, as what little banter there was dissolves into deeply personal attacks. Like their friends, we too are left wanting to escape the uncomfortable silences that follow by making our excuses and heading for the door. If this were filmed in french, we’d probably be looking at a dreadfully dull arthouse film but as it is, we are caught between expecting light comedy and the director being unsure of his brief.

You get the letter every Sunday, after tea or just before the guests leave and then it’s eight, ten hours of waiting, nervously (of course) for the train to come in; waiting for the one or two oddballs who actually have business in this neck of the woods to disembark, papers in hand.

Close your eyes and it still doesn’t change. Read a book and everything hangs around the periphery, waiting like an assistant with your wife on the phone.