Another Year

If I told you that Another Year is about an old married couple you might not want to go and see it, which would be a shame because this is a fine film, a lovely meditation on life and its adventures – or lack of them. It is also a refreshing antidote to the crash bang nonsense that often passes for Hollywood entertainment. So, full disclosure – Another Year is about an old married couple, Gerri (Ruth Sheen) and Tom (Jim Broadbent) – we never learn their last names, as though when the film begins we already know then too well to bother with formalities. Much of the action takes place in their cozy London house, comfortably decorated with a lifetime of good memories. Tom and Gerri garden, they cook dinner, they sip wine, they hang out.

And they have friends who aren’t nearly as content with their lives.

The film is divided into four parts, identified by the season, the passage of time punctuated by visits to Gerri and Tom’s “allotment,” a plot of land somewhere in town where they work their most ambitious gardening. On a wet spring evening they host Mary, Gerri’s long time co-worker, for dinner; Mary, played with searing, heartbreaking intensity by Lesley Manville, is a middle aged woman, clinging to her youth, disappointed by her life. She drinks too much and carries on about her great love, the one who got away, and we have the sense that all this has happened before, that Gerri and Tom have patiently listened to Mary rant many times. Then, a few months later, Tom’s friend Ken (Peter Wight) shows up with much the same story, drinking his way through dinner, complaining about his life, showing little interest in doing anything about it. (Wight does remarkable work as Ken, somehow making an unattractive, unappealing character sympathetic).

Now, if you think you can tell where this is going you are wrong; Another Year moves slowly and lingers lovingly on the routine activities of life, but it is not predictable. Sometime during the summer segment of the film Gerri and Tom’s son Joe (Oliver Maltman) shows up; he’s a thirty year old attorney who is often too busy to visit with mum and dad, but when he arrives it’s clear the family is close and has a happy history. Unlike most of the other people in this movie Joe is looking forward to the unexplored future of his life, instead of lingering unhappily on the past, and when, in autumn, he surprises his parents by arriving at their door with a girlfriend (a fresh and appealing Karina Fernandez) in tow, they are delighted even as Katie’s  appearance throws the disappointments of their friends’ lives into starker relief.

There is a simple, charming elegance to this film. Nothing is overstated, and we arrive in the story as though we always belonged there anyway. When Tom pours Gerri some wine we want to hold up our glass, and when Mary starts to rant we wish we could quietly excuse ourselves to our hosts and head on home; the film is that personal and intimate. But it is also thoughtful and refreshing in its honest portrayal of regular people, well worth a night at the multiplex. A