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With his orange-colored bowl haircut and freckled cheeks,
actor Rupert Grint (known by millions of pre-teens as Harry
Potter's cinematic sidekick) is perfectly cast as Ben, an
awkward teenage boy whose reticence almost trespasses into
total muteness. After a lifetime of being reined in by his
overbearing, deeply religious mother (the always spot-on Laura
Linney), Ben enters into the social world via his job as
assistant to one spitfire of a diva, the washed-up actress Eve
Walton (the inimitable Julie Walters of EDUCATING RITA fame).
Walton, unable to accept the disintegration of her once-lauded
career, chews up the scenery with her theatrics, culled from
both plays of her past (think Shakespeare soliloquizing on
cue) and creations of her imagination (she constantly invents
stories to tell Ben, forgetting them only hours later). Yet it
is exactly this overdramatic flair for life that awakens
something in the actress's repressed assistant, and, for the
first time, Ben begins to assert himself and his ideas. Of
course, this is much to the chagrin of his pious, controlling
mother, who struggles in her sternway to keep Ben on the leash
she has worked so hard to tighten around him.
First-time director Jeremy Brock is no stranger to
writing roles for strong women, having penned the scripts for
MRS. BROWN and CHARLOTTE GRAY (played by Dame Judi Dench and
Cate Blanchett). He proves that his sensitivity to detail and
nuance translates to his directorial persona, crafting a movie
that is as impeccably acted as it is carefully written,
creating a balance between comedy and heartfelt drama that
resonates deeply. |
