Butler's Cinema Scene

Emma Thompson

“THE CHILDREN ACT”  My rating:C+

105 minutes | MPAA rating: R 

“The Children Act” is part probing characters study, part  melodrama.

The first part works better than the second.

Fiona Maye (Emma Thompson) is a family court judge who gets all the tough cases. As Richard Eyre’s film begins she is deciding whether conjoined twins should be surgically separated…even if it means one of them will die (they have only one heart).

Fiona deals with her emotionally taxing work by building an aura of professional detachment.  Unfortunately, that detachment has spread to her private life.

One day her husband Jack (Stanley Tucci) announces that he’s thinking about having an affair.  He points out that he and Fiona haven’t had sex in almost a year — she just isn’t interested.  Jack isn’t willing to announce an official end to his sex life.

Fiona blows up and throws him out of the house. All this domestic turmoil comes as she  faces a news-generating trial over a teenaged Jehovah’s Witness whose leukemia cannot be treated until he receives a blood transfusion.

The kid’s doctors are suing to be allowed to perform the transfusion.  The boy’s parents (Ben Chaplin, Eileen Walsh) maintain that this violates their religious beliefs; if their son dies, then it’s God’s will.

All this pressure is making Fiona a snappish wreck; she makes life miserable for her  dutiful law clerk (Jason Watkins).

Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci

In the key scene of “The Children Act” (the screenplay is by Ian McEwan, based on his novel)  the judge visits the hospital room of the dying boy, Adam (Fionn Whitehead). She’s curious to learn if the kid really is accepting of his fate or whether the boy is simply parroting his parents’ religious beliefs.

The encounter shakes her world.  Adam is smart, funny, philosophical. Though dying, he’s learning to play the guitar.  He and the visiting jurist give an impromptu performance of a folk song. They connect…big time.

This meeting comes halfway through the film, and thereafter “The Children Act” (the title refers to the Brit law delineating the powers of the court regarding the welfare of minors) starts sliding into melodrama.

Fiona rules that Adam should get the blood transfusion. He’s not cured, but at least he can leave the hospital.

At which point the teenager starts stalking the judge, even following her to another city.  It’s not an erotic  attraction — not exactly — but Adam wants only to be with the woman who took the time to really listen to him.

“The Children Act” has been very well acted.  Few actresses possess Thompson’s ability to suggest inner turmoil, and Tucci makes of the husband a decent fellow feeling desperately love-starved. Whitehead is both touching and a bit scary as the adolescent who for years has been walking with Death.

But somewhere along the way the film loses its focus. The film has been very carefully paced, but ultimately feels a bit lifeless.

| Robert W. Butler