Together at last as co-stars, and now primed to split up on screen, Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds are the perfect choices to play married couple Stella and Gerry in this fine adaptation of Belfast author Bernard MacLaverty's 2017 book of the same name.
In the days after Christmas, the Derry-born Stella and Gerry leave their adopted home of Glasgow for a few days away in Amsterdam. It's all sweets on the plane and giddy delight, but away from the hamster wheel of routine, the things that have been left unsaid by two people who know each other too well soon rise to the surface. Will there be an empty seat beside one of them on the way back? A short flight at the end of the long haul?
The feature debut of Olivier Award-winning theatre director Polly Findlay, Midwinter Break is billed as "a stirring meditation on faith, commitment, and the enduring power of love". It delivers all that, and will leave fans of low-key, grown-up storytelling wishing that Manville and Hinds would make a film together every year. Director Findlay has said that within two days of the stage and screen veterans working together, you felt that they'd been married 40 years. She's not overselling it; you'll feel the same way in minutes.
A tidy two-hander that moves faster than the traffic- and ice-wary pair at its centre, Midwinter Break arrives post-Oscars and leaves you mystified by the scheduling. Just how big of an audience is it going to get? Certainly, not the one it deserves, especially with heavy hitters like Sentimental Value still in the cinemas too. Financed by Film4, this drama will predominantly be seen by people in their own homes - but watching over the lip of a mug is no match for being in a big, dark room somewhere else.
Even Stella and Gerry would agree on that.
