University lecturer Nick is taking his school-teacher wife Meg on a weekend trip to Paris to celebrate their 30th Wedding Anniversary.  They live in a suburb of Birmingham in the Midlands of the UK which is a place of little joy.  Nick is hoping this trip will kick-start their neglected sex-life into action again, whereas unbeknown to him, Meg is thinking hard about wanting to re-start her life alone. 

When they get off the Eurostar and trek across the city they discover that the Hotel that cheap-skate Nick has booked is a real dump. Meg refuses to stay there and jumps in a cab and brandishing a fistful of Euros implores the driver to take them to a decent hotel. He goes one better and they end up with a Suite in a luxurious Hotel that has stunning views of the Eiffel tower even though this is way over their budget.  Nick hopes this, and a Parisian bistro lunch will improve Meg’s demeanor but little hope of that that as she has kept her thoughts and her unhappiness to herself for too long, and just wants to finally confront Nick with it all.  He in turn confesses that he had recently been fired from the University for being politically incorrect and doesn’t know what the future holds for him even if she stayed. It’s not so much that Meg no longer loves him, but he does irritate the hell out of her and at the same time she is completely frustrated by the rut her life has sunk into.

Later on when they are kissing and making up on the street they are spotted completely by chance by Morgan a very brash American who had been an Undergraduate at Cambridge with Nick when they were very young students. He insists that they join him and his wife at a dinner party they are throwing the next evening … a reason for Meg to spend more money they don’t have on some chic party clothes so they fit in with the other smart guests.

Morgan seems to have it all.  A new wife expecting a child, several best selling books to his name, a chic apartment on Rue De Rivoli, a veritable who’s who of publishing as the other guests, and all the confidence and style that comes with it.  He has seemingly exceeded all his ambitions whereas Nick, the more successful of the two at University, has fulfilled none of his promise at all.  And if that is not bad enough, Nick & Meg’s only son is a unemployed pothead who expects them to underwrite his life completely .

Of course Morgan has it all, except for happiness. And this one crucial thing that he hasn’t got is something that is actually in Nick & Meg’s grasp if they could just learn to talk straight to each other and to be able  compromise too.

Its a very small intimate piece that fluctuates between very emotionally penetrating but also having great deal of mischievous droll humor. This marriage has not broken down, but just stalled and although we are never sure if the will is there to get it get back on track, we always know its possible. They …. or Meg does at least ….starts by throwing caution to the wind and for once in their lives, spending large amounts of money that they do not have, but they learn that they can find a way to deal with even this if they stop and think it through.

In this three-hander a great deal rests with the actors to make this come so alive, but fortunately Nick is played by Jim Broadbent who seems to excel at playing bewildered (late) middle-aged men, and the chemistry between him and the wonderful Lindsay Duncan as the under-appreciated Meg is nothing less than electric.  And I cant remember liking a performance by Jeff Goldblum (as Morgan) as much  as I did here for a very long time.

It was written by Hanif Kureishi who first soared onto our radars in 1985 with his Oscar nominated script for the groundbreaking movie about another kind of intimate relationship. This one was between an Asian man and a (white) Brit man in what is still one of my very favorite gay films of all time ‘My Beautiful Launderette’.  

A must see for anyone into grown-up films about very real relationships …. and especially if you are an Anglo-phile.

★★★★★★★★