Deborah Warner steps from theatre to screen director with an adaptation of an Elizabeth Bowen novella set in the Irish Troubles of 1920. Not "heritage cinema" perhaps; more "disinheritance cinema". Despite the IRA popping off Black and Tans, the Big House is an insulated enclave of English snobbery (Maggie Smith in grande dame mode, killing with a look and a consonant; Michael Gambon, a very English two-faced knight).
Keeley Hawes is their orphaned niece who needs to "marry well'', but won't find a fortune in the pay packet of the British Army captain (David Tennant) she does a jazz dance with in the woods while the horn gramophone plays, until a house guest and woman of the world (Fiona Shaw, absolutely of her time and place) reminds the lass there are better men and bigger fortunes "across the water". The Montmorencys (Lambert Wilson, Jane Birkin) arrive, refugees from their own destroyed estate with only a Rolls to their name, ominous reminders that the local firebrands are closing in. Meanwhile, anyone for tennis?
Warner handles her cast confidently enough, showing her theatrical finesse, but where it's most in need of strength - a fresh look at a class done to death by cliché, even more than history - the film is weakest. It's also too perfectly composed. Perhaps her inexperience caused the director to entrust her camera to a seasoned cinematographer, Slawomir Idziak, who shot Kieslowski's Three Colours Blue and The Double Life of Veronique. He over-composes and under-lights scene after scene: though September is the month, a gloom more appropriate to a midwinter power cut makes you strain simply to see what's happening, sometimes even who's who.
The Last September
Cert: cert18
