Reviewed by Cassam Looch
Stars Colin Firth, Jim Broadbent,
Sarah Lancashire, Gina McKee
Written by David Nicholls, based
on the novel by Blake Morrison
Certification UK 12A | US PG-13
Runtime 92 minutes
Directed by Anand Tucker
What’s going on here ... another decent British film?! Slightly more familiar in tone, but nonetheless it’s still a great film with very strong central performances. Cleverly told in the present and over a series of fast-paced flashbacks, And When Did You Last See Your Father follows Blake Morrison (Firth) as he returns to the family home to care for his ailing father Arthur (Broadbent). Arthur was a larger than life man who dominated his family with his steadfast nature and enthusiastic attitude to life. As a younger man, Blake grew to resent this and indeed began to hate his father’s ways and secrets. We follow Arthur and Blake from an innocent father/son relationship to the gradual distancing that occurs between them, and then back again towards the end of Arthur’s life.
The title might seem ungainly and overly emotive, but it actually does fit the film perfectly well. It is for all in tenses and purposes a film for guys to chew over. It’s up there with Shawshank Redemption, Field of Dreams, Big Fish and A.I in terms of deliberately aiming to floor the male gender and make them look like big girls blouses... and it works.
The other films I mentioned also had a lot else going on throughout them, and this is where this film falls down slightly. It is very much a one trick film, concentrating on Arthur and Blake and not much else. Thankfully both Firth and Broadbent are superb, as is the younger actor playing Blake in some of the flashback scenes. One strand does alienate most of the audience however, and it is an unnecessary ‘twist’ that is played throughout the second half of the film. Writer Blake Morrison obviously puts his whole life on display here, but never shies away from the more unpleasant aspects of everyday life and human nature. Honest and poignant, not exactly a lads’ film but all the better for it.
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SECOND OPINION | Neil Davey **** And When Did You Last See Your Father defies a lot of movie logic. For starters, it belies the theory that carefully nuanced character pieces have to be 120 minutes plus and mollusc-paced. This zips along at 92 minutes, never flinches from the painful subject therein and provides a handful of quite superb performances. It also belies the theory that such a subject matter — cancer, fractured father/son relationships — has to be bleak as it finishes in poignant, beautiful but very funny style. And finally, it belies the theory that Firth’s major contribution to entertainment has been emerging from a lake in a frilly shirt. There’s nothing here to get Middle England’s lasses so steamed up but, for those who are interested in such things, Firth finally proves that he can act. No. Really.
The film is based on Blake Morrison’s memoir of the same name, a long, hard and frequently painful look at the difficult relationship he’d had with his overbearing father, Arthur (played with customary excellence by an Oscar-worthy Broadbent). With Arthur dying of cancer, Blake (Firth) reflects on life with this dominating figure, the embarrassing situations and, most specifically, the likelihood that friend-of-the-family Beaty (Lancashire) was actually Arthur’s mistress and that her daughter Josie is Blake’s half-sister. Hardly the stuff of Saturday night cinema then, but we can hope. Go on. Leave the blockbusters for another day and go and see this moving, superbly acted — all the above, plus Juliet Stevenson as Blake’s mother, Gina McKee as his wife and, particularly, the wonderful Elaine Cassidy as teenage Blake’s accommodating au pair — and remarkably life-affirming drama. It’s an absolute pleasure from start to finish. Oh, and previous reports that the British film industry is dead were a little premature...
• Official Site
• And When Did You Last See Your Father? at IMDb