Hope Gap Movie Review
Nathan Swank
March 24th, 2020
After 29 years of marriage, Edward is leaving his wife Grace for another woman. HOPE GAP explores the quiet subtlety of unhappiness and the way love can change. Proving that the absence of nurture and communication can cause a discouraging complacency that may not be noticeable to an outside party or even one of the two people involved.
Grace (Annette Bening) and Edward (Bill Nighy) are living out their days in their small seaside home. It’s clear their communication is lacking as they mostly go through the motions. Grace, a scholar in poetry, is outspoken with her feelings and desperately desires to talk and share thoughts, while Edward, a teacher, keeps mostly to himself, pouring his wife tea and working on Wikipedia. They have an adult son who rarely visits.
Nearly thirty years into their marriage, Edward decides he no longer loves his wife and believes that she would be happier without him. While Edward believes Grace should have expected this decision, it is in fact, a shocking revelation. Grace plummets in an emotional crash, isolated in their remote home near a rocky, ocean view front (named Hope Gap). Their grown son, Jamie (Josh O’Connor), is caught in the middle, returning every weekend to be there for his mother and identifying a bit of his own unhappiness in life.
I found HOPE GAP to be a good example of the effects of not feeding a fire within a marriage. Love and marriage takes work and if the two people are not willing to work then it will die. Such is the case in HOPE GAP. Grace may be a bit abrasive, but she is never given the chance to change since her husband won’t share his feelings. She’s trying. Grace desperately desires the communication of feelings and regularly asks for it and criticism, but there is little she can do if the other party is not willing to open up.
It helps that the film features two heavy hitters in Bill Nighy and four-time Oscar nominee, Annette Bening. The latter being who I believe to be one of our greatest actresses to grace the screen. Josh O’Connor also does a fine job who sort of acts as the audience’s eyes into these three characters.
Writer and director William Nicholson has screenplay Oscar nominations for 1993’s SHADOWLANDS and 2000’s GLADIATOR. Nicholson writes a competent screenplay with serious emotion and compelling dialogue, but it doesn’t quite have that extra kick. It’s a fascinating look at how something like this could happen but is void of that connection of empathy where the audience truly feels for the characters. The film would have benefited from a bigger finale moment, even if that isn’t the way things always work out. The hope that it was trying to achieve fell a little flat and I think, perhaps, we simply needed to see Grace have a moment to shine a little.
I’ve always had a soft spot for family dramas. The most recent gem being 2020’s ORDINARY LOVE (click the link to read my review). HOPE GAP is able to find its own niche in the genre by following a divorce at a much older age. It’s also special in that the motivations are anything but hateful. Similar to 2019’s MARRIAGE STORY, there is a clear villain in Bill Nighy’s character, but it’s not quite as shameful, since the child involved is now an adult. However, unlike the other film, HOPE GAP feels a bit more honest without obvious frustrations through selfish desires to hurt the other person. I’m happy I saw HOPE GAP, but it lacks a depth to make it a truly memorable piece.
[fbcomments]
