Midwinter Break — sad, spiky and brilliantly acted portrait

Films about ageing empty-nesters who take a bittersweet holiday and are forced to confront something about their relationship are familiar. Roger Michell’s Le Week-End cast Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan as an older couple on a Eurostar break in Paris, and Paolo Virzì’s The Leisure Seeker has Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren impulsively heading off in a Winnebago.

Many of those films indulge a soft, sunset-sentimentalism that can feel lenient and depressing – Polly Findlay’s film is different: fiercely sad, spiky and wonderfully acted, adapted from a novel by Bernard MacLaverty. Ciarán Hinds and Lesley Manville play Gerry and Stella, a late-middle-aged couple from Northern Ireland who left for Scotland in the 1970s, traumatised by the Troubles, and who take a restorative midwinter break in Amsterdam.

Gerry’s drinking and Stella’s loneliness, sharpened by his mockery of her Catholic faith, undercut their apparent happiness.

midwinter break, polly findlay, bernard maclaverty, ciarán hinds, lesley manville, amsterdam, northern ireland, troubles, drinking, catholic faith