True Blue Lou

Rating: 6/10 (3 June 2016)

Apart from movies, literature, and music my other great passion is theatre and around twenty years ago I saw Janet McTeer star as a memorable Beatrice opposite Mark Rylances' Benedek which is more or less one for the So What department except that in this movie she has a featured role as the mother of the male lead, which is yet more so what until we remember that Benedek and Beatrice were the prototypes for all the great movies in which a male and a female began by disliking each other and wind up as an item. That is not quite true of this movie; the man certainly begins by resenting the girl but then he resents most people; as for the girl, she is in it for the money. As she is something of a kook it's not to hard to see why he eventually falls for her - this is one of those parts that slightly off-beat actresses can score big in - think Audrey Tautao in Amelie - but then cannot really replicate, but it's more difficult to see what someone in a steady seven-year relationship should forget it virtually overnight and fall hook, line and sinker for a quadriplegic. Well again not quite, did I mention that not only is the guy very good looking but also seriously wealthy. Just once it would be refreshing, if not a tad more like the real world if the girl fell for someone who looked like Arthur Mullard and lived in a council flat and especially in a film like this that is addressing a serious subject, assisted suicide but trying to have it both ways by giving it gloss of a Doris Day-Rock Hudson rom-com of the 1950s. The two leads both turn in fine performances and the manipulative writing and direction does, in the majority of viewers, attract the hoped-for tears but it would have been nice if we could lose the chocolate-box elements and trust the audience to respond to the situation rather than the budget.