Butler's Cinema Scene

Saoirse Ronan, Billy Howe

“ON CHESIL BEACH” My rating: C+ 

110 minutes | MPAA rating: R

No film with Saoirse Ronan can be easily dismissed. Nonetheless, many will find “On Chesil Beach” a long haul.

Directed by Dominic Cooke and adapted by Ian McEwan from his 2007 novel, this is a story of lost love.  More specifically, it’s about two young people utterly unprepared for the intimacies of married life who are driven apart by sexual dysfunction.

That may sound intriguing…and on the printed page it was.  The problem is that McEwan’s novel is a deep psychological study of two individuals, and deep psychology is not one of the things the movies do particularly well.

We can see the outside, but we’re not privy to what’s happening on the inside. And despite McEwan’s use of extensive flashbacks to depict the young lovers’ courtship and backgrounds, the whole enterprise feels like it’s unfolding at an emotional arm’s length.

Florence (Ronan) and Edward (Billy Howle) check into a seaside hotel for their honeymoon. They’re nervous…this is the big night, after all.  The time is the early ’60s and these two virgins are both eager and terrified.

In a series of flashbacks we see how they met and fell in love.

Edward is working class, a bit impetuous and keyed into the burgeoning pop culture of the day. His family history is far from storybook; his mother (Anne-Marie Duff) suffered a head injury when struck by a train and now devotes herself to making art in the nude.

Florence’s background is a pure 180 from Edward’s. She comes from the upper crust, plays violin in a string quartet, and married Edward despite the disdain of her snooty/pompous parents (Emily Watson, Samuel West).

He thinks Chuck Berry is awesome.  She thinks Chuck Berry is “quite, well, merry.” (That early exchange, initially amusing, carries grim portents for the couple’s compatibility.)

Billy Howle, Saoirse Ronan

What happens in that honeymoon hotel room could, in some circumstances, be played as knowing comedy. First-time intercourse, after all, is often a fumbling affair. Best to laugh it off and try again.

But in Florence and Edward’s case the failure to launch leads almost immediately to overwrought repercussions: shame, revulsion, frustration, fury.

In seconds they fall back on class distinctions.

Here’s my main beef: A great love story allows the audience to vicariously experience the thrill of falling in love. But “On Chesil Beach” feels emotionally remote; if we can’t get a buzz off Florence and Edward’s romance, we’re not invested enough to care when it falls apart.

Ironically, the film only really started working for me in depicting the couple’s lives after their split. In several short but revealing scenes we see a middle-aged Edward at work in a record store. (Perfect.) One day a teenage girl comes in and asks to buy a Chuck Berry LP for her mother.  Her mom, the girl says, finds Chuck Berry quite merry.

Most critics seem to hate these final scenes, which ultimately rely on old-age makeup to depict Edward and Florence’s final meeting after decades apart. Not me.  I found the bittersweet power of these moments to contain more pure feeling than anything seen up to that point.

| Robert W. Butler