Finding Your Feet (12A) ***
Dir: Richard Loncraine
With: Imelda Staunton, Timothy Spall
Runtime: 111 minutes
WITH its familiar cast and bittersweet approach to getting older, Richard Loncraine’s London-set drama is chasing the Best Exotic Marigold pound as surely as autumn succeeds summer. Imelda Staunton leads the way as Sandra, one-time Greenham Common protester with proud leftie sister Bif (Celia Imrie), but now a betrayed and frightened wife trying to start again. Can she find friendship among Bif’s dancing, adventuring, good-time pals of a certain age? The answer is thunderingly predictable and the tweeness takes some getting used to, but with a cast that also includes Timothy Spall and David Hayman you are in safe hands.
Dark River (15) ****
Dir: Clio Barnard
With: Ruth Wilson, Mark Stanley
Runtime: 90 minutes
FUNCTIONING as a sort of antidote to Finding Your Feet is this grim-up-north drama from Clio Barnard. Alice and Joe Bell (Ruth Wilson and Mark Stanley) were close growing up, but Alice fled the farm in Yorkshire as soon as she could, with flashbacks to her life with dad (played by Sean Bean) making clear why. With her father now dead, Alice goes home to take what she feels belongs to her, but brother Joe has other ideas. While Barnard has been unlucky with timing in that her drama explores some of the same areas as the recently released The Levelling, the performances from Wilson (Luther) and Stanley (Game of Thrones, Love, Lies and Hope) make it well worth a look.
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