Parky at the Pictures (DVD 25/10/2018)

Narrator Julie Christie introduces us to war widow Florence Green (Emily Mortimer), whose love of books prompts her to open a bookshop in the late 1950s Suffolk coastal town of Hardborough. She assures bank manager Mr Keble (Hunter Tremayne) that she understands the trade and is convinced she can make a go of converting The Old House, an abandoned edifice that she has recently purchased. Fisherman Raven (Michael Fitzgerald) teases her that the only person who reads in these parts is Edmund Brundish (Bill Nighy), a recluse who is occasionally spotted walking in the dunes when he is not defacing books that have the temerity to include a photograph of the author on the cover. 

Fitted for a new maroon dress by Jessie Welford (Frances Barber), Florence attends a cocktail party thrown at The Stead by General Gamart (Reg Wilson) and his queen bee wife, Violet (Patricia Clarkson). The general mumblingly laments the demise of poetry before passing Florence on to Milo North (James Lance), a TV personality dressed in a white tuxedo, who scolds Florence for wearing a colour favoured by servants on their day off. He wonders if she has ever thought of remarrying, but Florence insists that she had been perfectly happily married before her husband was killed. Her discomfort is then increased by Violet, who avers through a rictus smile that many in the burgh would prefer to see The Old House being converted into an arts centre.

Surprised when Deben (Nigel O'Neill) asks if she would rather open her business in the fish shop he intends selling, Florence urges lawyer Tom Thornton (Jorge Suquet) to conclude the deal as quickly as possible. The local sea scouts help her put up the shelves and Florence feels close to her late spouse, as she unpacks the first box of books and sees the new sign hanging over the door. Raven comes to give her some encouragement and suggest that she takes on 11 year-old Christine Gipping (Honor Kneafsey) if things get busy in the afternoons. 

One of the scouts, Wally (Harvey Bennett), arrives with a note from Brundish, whose wife drowned in the marshes while out picking blackberries for a pie. He declares (in a stiff speech to camera) that he is pleased to learn that Florence has opened her shop and would be grateful if she could start sending him recommended volumes. She begins with Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Philip Larkin's Collected Poems and Kingsley Amis's That Uncertain Feeling, which she wraps in grey paper for Wally to deliver. He is impressed with the Bradbury and receives a copy of The Martian Chronicles. Meanwhile, Christine arrives to declare a dislike of reading and boys and a willingness to work every day after school for 12 shillings a week. 

Amused by her plain-speaking, Florence comes to enjoy Christine's company and urges her to read Richard Hughes's A High Wind in Jamaica, while also giving her tips on how to fill paraffin heaters and promising to leave her a Chinese lacquered tray in her will. For her part, Christine warns Florence against trusting the brilliantined Milo, who suggests that she stocks Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita to go with the saucy postcards that Christine had persuaded her against throwing away. 

Concerned that the text might be too racy for the locals, Florence sends it to Brundish to elicit his verdict. She is taken aback when he invites her to Holt House for tea and the news spreads like wildfire, as not even Violet Gamart has had this pleasure. Brundish greets Florence at the top of a stone staircase and she helps him lay the table. Speaking hesitantly, he informs her that he is not a widower, as his wife left for London by mutual consent six months into their marriage. He also commends Florence on her courage and hopes that she will be able to withstand the assault that Violet is planning to ruin Florence and claim The Old House for her arts centre. 

On parting, Brundish encourages Florence to order 250 copies of Lolita and notes his own anticipation for Ray Bradbury's imminent opus, Dandelion Wine. However, the Nabokov window display causes ructions and an exchange of letters between Thornton, Violet and Florence results in the latter surviving an attempt at censure. So, Violet enlists the help of her nephew, Lionel Fitzhugh (James Murphy), a Tory MP who is proposing a bill to allow buildings of public value to be compulsorily purchased and turned over to the community. She also arranges for a school inspector and a social worker to prevent Christine from working for her and Mrs Gipping (Lucy Tillet) comes to apologise for the fact that she will now be doing Saturdays at the new bookshop opening at the fishmonger's.

Florence is taken aback by the news and resists Keble's advice to cut her loses and sell up. She finds solace in a brief conversation on the beach with Milo's girlfriend, Kattie (Charlotte Vega), who works for the BBC and is tired of dancing to smug chauvinist's tune. When she dumps him, Milo asks Florence if he can become her new assistant and Christine catches him putting up the `Closed' sign when he is left in sole charge. Having been given her tray as a leaving present, Christine feels protective of Florence. As does Brundish, who seeks her out on the dunes to offer his help in warding off Violet's bid to acquire The Old House. He kisses Florence's hand and wishes they had met in other circumstances. But, while he strives to remain civil during his audience with Violet, he allows his temper to get the better of him and she protests that she is simply putting the best interests of the residents first rather than trying to ruin Florence.

When Blundish collapses on his way home, General Gamart comes to the bookshop to offer his condolences. He implies that Blundish had been returning home after congratulating Violet on her art centre campaign and Florence orders him to leave and impugns his honour. Shortly afterwards, she is informed by a couple of official bods that Violet has succeeded in her bid to acquire The Old House and that Florence risks losing compensation because builder Peter Gipping (Toby Gibson) has declared it unfit for human habitation because of standing water in the basement. When Florence inquires when he conducted his inspection, she learns that Milo gave him access and that he is planning to sue her because his health has deteriorated since working in the shop. 

Having ensured that Milo understands her contempt, Florence returns home with her neighbours peering at her through their windows. She packs a case and is leaving on Raven's boat when Christine rushes to the quayside. Florence sees she is clutching a copy of A High Wind in Jamaica and looks across the skyline to see smoke rising from the bookshop. In an instant, she surmises that Christine has used the paraffin stove to burn down The Old House to prevent Violet from fulfilling her dream. Moreover, she realises that she has passed on her love of books to the little girl who didn't like to read. A closing shot reveals that the narrator is the adult Christine, who now runs her own bookshop.

There's something beautiful and corny about Julie Christie's parting assertion that it's impossible to feel alone in a bookshop. Given the state of bookselling in the age of Amazon and e-readers, the message has an undeniable poignancy. However, this respectful, but lifeless adaptation scarcely earns the right to stand as a champion for an imperilled trade. It might namecheck provocative texts like Fahrenheit 451 and Lolita, but it has no intention of considering there themes. Consequently, this is less a paean to books and the life-changing ideas they contain than a cautionary tale on the misuse of power by philistinic populists who claim to represent the commonfolk while protecting their own privileges against passively aggressive progressives. 

Such blatant allegorisation would be more excusable if Coixet had been more convincing in her depiction of a 1950s backwater. Shooting in Northern Ireland rather than East Anglia, she pays lip service to the look and timbre of postwar society. Despite the neatness of Llorenç Miquel's production design and Mercè Paloma's costumes, Coixet conveys a quaintly faux Englishness that is exacerbated by the over-deliberate delivery that draws attention to the arch formality of the dialogue. Bill Nighy particularly struggles in this regard, although James Vince, Reg Wilson and the usually reliable Patricia Clarkson are no more comfortable and it's left to Honor Kneafsey, with her knitted cardigan and Violet Elizabeth Bott curls, to match the typically effective Emily Mortimer's relaxed naturalism. 

Amongst many domestic honours, Coixet landed the Goyas for Best Film, Direction and Adapted Screenplay. But she relies on the voiceover rather than Jean-Claude Larrieu's visuals to keep the story ticking along and, despite having Brundish declare that `understanding makes the mind lazy', she often employs Alfonso de Vilallonga's mawkish score to drive home emotional points that the audience might have missed in the acerbic civility of exchanges dictated by the class chasms that are barely explored, in spite of them being central to the feud between Violet and Florence. So, for all its good intentions and technical care, this lament for a bygone Neverland and the notional ideals that sustained it proves that you can't just a book by its cover version.

Music rather than fiction plays the crucial role in Terence Davies's feature bow, Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), which is returning to disc to mark its 30th anniversary. Continuing the experiment with the `memory-realism' that Davies had employed on the shorts trilogy comprised of Children (1976), Madonna and Child (1980) and Death and Transfiguration (1983), this was originally envisaged as separate films. Indeed, `Distant Voices' and `Still Lives' were made two years apart with different crews. However, Davies decided to merge the storylines and produce the first part of a deeply personal triptych about his hometown, which would be completed with The Long Day Closes (1992) and the award-winning (and highly overrated) documentary, Of Time and the City (2008).

As the Shipping Forecast is read out on the radio, Annie (Freda Dowie) picks three bottles of milk off a rainsoaked Liverpool doorstep and a female voice croons `I Always Cry When It Rains', as she calls up the stairs for children Eileen (Angela Walsh), Maisie (Lorraine Ashbourne) and Tony (Dean Williams) to come for their breakfast. Following a dissolve, the family dressed in mourning waits for the hearse and put on a brave face as they shuffle down the garden path to the following car. Jessye Norman sings `There's a Man Goin' Round' and another dissolve reveals the foursome posing with equal formality and only marginally greater joy, as Tony prepares to give Eileen away on her wedding day. 

Eileen wishes her father, Tommy, (Pete Postlethwaite) was there. But Maisie doesn't, as she recalls the time he had beaten her with a broom after she had asked permission to go out with her friend and he had ordered her to scrub the basement floor. Tony is also glad the old man's missing, as he thinks back to the night during his National Service when they had argued so bitterly that he had cut his hand while smashing the front window and had tossed the few coins in his army uniform pocket into the fire after his father refused to drink with him. The night had ended with red caps bundling him into the back of a van and Tony had presumably never patched things up before Tommy fell ill and the family came to visit him in hospital.

Eileen's pal Micky (Debi Jones) had always know how to get round him and she had charmed him into lending them five bob to go to the dance - although even she couldn't talk him into letting Eileen finish her ciggie on the doorstep at 11pm. Micky and Jingles (Marie Jelliman) had been hugely impressed when Dave (Michael Starke) had bought Eileen a bottle of Chanel No.5 and this seemed to seal the deal for their engagement. Following a simply ceremony and a reception back at the house, the wedding party had piled down to the pub for a sing-song of such old classics as `If You Knew Susie'. Yet, while Maisie sings `My Yiddisher Mama', Eileen bawls for her father on her brother's shoulder and he can only hug her in silent consolation. 

As `In the Bleak Midwinter' plays on the soundtrack, the camera executes a backwards track from the pub window to the Marian shrine at the local Catholic church, where Mother, Father and the young Eileen (Sally Davies), Tony (Nathan Walsh) and Maisie (Susan Flanagan) had lit votive candles and prayed with joined hands. The track continues to a row of terraced windows illuminated with Christmas lights before pausing to watch Father trimming the tree and turning to give his kids a fond smile before they traipse up the diddly dancers to bed. He had choked slightly at the sight of them snuggled in the same bed and wished God's blessing for them, as he tied their stockings to the bedpost. But, the next day, he had yanked the cloth off the table and sent the crockery and the Christmas cake crashing to the floor before bellowing for Annie to come and clear up the mess.

As Tony looks at his father fighting for breath in his hospital bed, he thinks back to playing his harmonica in the brig and his army pals singing `It Takes a Worried Man', as Tony shows off his knowledge of heavyweight boxing champions and they knock back beer in a train compartment. He had come home on compassionate leave and had accepted his father's gurgled attempt at an apology. At the wedding reception, Aunty Nell (Jean Boht) had warbled `Roll Along, Kentucky Moon', while Granny (Anne Dyson) had piped up with `A Little Bit of Cucumber' and Maisie had joked that she wished she had stayed on holiday in the Isle of Man, as she is just as unpredictable as her son had been. 

While the kids watched Mother perched on the sill washing the upstairs windows, they challenged God not to let anything happen to her. One of the girls asks her why she married their dad and, as Ella Fitzgerald sings `Taking a Chance on Love', she replies that he was a good dancer. During their married life, however, he was handier with his fists and Annie had often been left bleeding and bruised after his furious assaults. But she had stuck with him and, at the wedding, she had sung `Barefoot Days' with a nostalgic gusto that prompts everyone to join in. During the war, Eileen had been the one to get everyone singing when her father cajoled her into doing `Roll Out the Barrel' in an air-raid shelter after he had just slapped her face for getting separated from him and having to be rescued by a warden as the Luftwaffe bombs fell. 

Eileen had been stricken with scarlatina and, while she was confined to bed, Father had banished Tony from the house for an unnamed crime and Mother had been powerless to intervene, as she watched him scamper off down the darkened street from behind the upstairs net curtains. Yet, when he sang `When Irish Eyes Are Smiling' while brushing a horse in the stable, the kids had scurried up the ladder to lie in the straw and listen to him. But, as they got older, they knew what they were up against. He had turned his face when Eileen had tried to say goodbye before leaving to work for the summer in Pwllheli and she had told him she would blow his brains out if she ever got a gun. However, she had been dumbstruck when she had been getting ready for a night out with Micky and Jingles when Father had turned up unannounced after discharging himself from the hospital and walking home.

He had died shortly afterwards and Granny had sobbed, as her boy was laid out on the table with pennies on his eyes. The girls had worked as waitresses in a posh hotel, although this wasn't their first adventure alone, as they had also been allowed to go camping at on the dunes at nearby Formby and Micky had hit Jingles with the mallet when she had accused her of breaking wind in the tent. But Eileen had had to come home early from Wales because Father's condition had deteriorated and she had felt trapped when she put the key in the door. On her wedding day, however, she had felt no freer, even though she was finally about to leave home with a chorus of `Buttons and Bows' with Micky and Jingles ringing in her ears.

A cat wanders in through the front door, as Mother confides off-screen that it won't be long before Tony and Maisie are married off. She decides to leave tidying up until the morning and we see her bathed in light in a red dress in a chair next to Father's photograph on the wall. But, while she can dream of a better tomorrow, as she dozes off in front of the fire, the grim realities of today hit home for Eileen, as Dave tells her that her gallivanting days with Micky and Jingles are ancient history and that her first duty is to her husband. 

At the start of `Still Lives', Maisie gives birth and proudly holds Elaine at the font alongside husband, George (Vincent Maguire). As Dickie Valentine croons `The Finger of Suspicion' and George snoozes along to Billy Cotton's Band Show and Tony smiles at Beyond Our Ken. Doreen (Pauline Quirke) comes to mind the child and sings on the doorstep as she waits to be invited inside. Down at the pub to wet the baby's head, Eileen annoys Dave with the lyrics to `Stone Cold Dead in the Market', but everyone joins in a song about the old gang, as Tony breezes in with his girlfriend, Rose (Antonia Mallen). 

Mother informs Mr Spaull (Matthew Long) from the Royal Liver that she wishes to cash in her policies on Eileen and Maisie, as they've flown the nest. Back at the pub, old school friend Margie (Frances Dell) wishes Maisie well before Micky turns up with Red (Chris Darwin), whom she had snubbed at Eileen's wedding. She ticks him off for talking football with Dave, who is seen checking his pools coupon with the classified radio results. Tony has no more luck with the 1959 Cesarewitch (which was won, ironically, by Come to Daddy), as Mother and Maisie pay a call on Eileen, who is living with Granny, as they can't afford a place of their own. Tony is still at home, however, and he feels guilty when Mother insists on finishing scrubbing the front step before having her tea. No wonder he sings `I Want a Girl (Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad)' so heartily at the christening do. 

Jingles arrives with her chap, Les (Andrew Schofield), and she joins with Eileen and Micky in a rendition of `Back in the Old Routine'. However, Les wants to go home and she fights back tears as she gets up to leave. Eileen wants to go over and burst Les, but Dave tells her to keep her nose out of other people's business and Annie has to remind them not to spoil the occasion. She asks Micky to sing and she launches into `Bye Bye Blackbird', but Eileen fires Dave a daggers look and Red jokes that Micky thinks she's the Scouse Judy Garland. 

Despite their banter, the pair are clearly happier than their friends and Micky can feel the pain when Eileen starts up with `I Wanna Be Around'. Yet, even Eileen and Dave have their funny moments, such as when Uncle Ted (Carl Chase) pops his head round the door while they are having their tea and turns the light off with a sinister sneer. He is Tommy's bald-headed brother and Dave complains that he's married into a family of nutters, but Eileen is more bothered about the noise he makes when he wolfs down his scran. However, as Ted reaches the foot of the stairs to Valentine Dyall introducing The Man in Black on the radio, Granny blows out his candle and tells him to stop acting soft. 

Tony gets a round in at the pub and carries the tray back to the table to join in with a rousing chorus of `I Love the Ladies'. But it's Red's turn to get jittery and Micky assures Eileen that she wears the trousers in their household, as the barmaid calls `time' and Annie starts up `We're On the Road to Anywhere'. While the menfolk talk football on the pavement, Micky tries to persuade Eileen to call round, as they're only 10 minutes away. But, while she doesn't want to provoke Dave unnecessarily, Eileen is quite prepared to give him a mouthful when he insists on taking a leak in the street with Granny hollering at them to keep the noise down as it's late.

As the rain hammers down on umbrellas outside the red brick walls of the Futurist Cinema - advertising Henry King's Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing and Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Guys and Dolls - Eileen and Maisie weep into their hankies at (presumably) Jennifer Jones learning of William Holden's death in the Korean War. However, tragedy strikes closer to home, as George falls off some scaffolding and through a glass roof and Maisie sobs at his bedside in the hospital. As the camera pans back from the rain falling outside, we see Annie, Rose, Eileen and Dave gathered around Tony's bed, as they urge him to pull through. 

We're never told whether we are flashing forward or back to Tony and Rose's wedding day. Mother sings `My Thanks to You', as Tony cries on the doorstep (presumably thinking about his dad) and someone suggests playing `Oh Mein Papa' on the record player instead of singing for themselves. As the happy couple clamber into the back of a taxi, Peter Pears sings Benjamin Britten's `O Waly, Waly' and the rest of the Davies clan wander off into the night and whatever the future might hold. 

Three decades after its initial release and the receipt of the Critics' Prize at Cannes, this soaperetta still captures the poetry of the ordinary with a delicacy that hints at the action's basis in precious memories. The production design of Miki van Zwanberg and Jocelyn James and the fusty photography of William Diver and Patrick Duval conjures up the bleakness of urban austerity and reinforces the hushed hesitancy of a household forever uncertain of the mood of a martinet father who has geniality and pride have been eroded by years of poverty and struggle. The soundtrack similarly shifts between melancholy and optimism, as the hymns, radio tunes and sing-along standards provide a poignantly public outlet for repressed emotions. But while the restless perspective can occasionally seem self-conscious, the film is so rooted in a precise time and place that it always feels like authentic autobiography rather than anything more archly artistic.

Exposing the bleak reality of a supposedly more innocent time, this inspired blend of music and melodrama feels like a flip through the pages of an animated photo album and succeeds in being both fond and forlorn, gritty and nostalgic. While each part is emotionally potent, `Distant Voices' is more accessible to non-Scousers, as it has a followable story at its heart. But `Still Lives' is bolder and more brilliant, as it evokes a sense of spirit that no longer exists, even on Merseyside, because the working-class communities that engendered it have disappeared. 

The performances are as spot on as Monica Howe's costumes. But one small detail does nag. Surely it wouldn't have taken four years for two 1955 movies to reach the first cinema in Liverpool to show CinemaScope pictures, especially as it was owned at the time by the very Hollywood studio that had produced them, 20th Century-Fox.

The call of commercials has restricted Simon Hunter's feature-making options and he has only managed two more since debuting with the 1999 horror, Lighthouse. As the second, Mutant Chronicles (2008), was based on a role-playing game, it's safe to say that Edie represents a distinct departure, as it accompanies a widowed octogenarian on an expedition up a Scottish mountain. However, it was while he was cooped up in a green-screen studio that Hunter promised himself a return to Suilven, the mountain in Sutherland that he had often climbed with his father during his Scottish childhood. The resulting picture may throw up few dramatic or thematic surprises. But it has a warmth to match its heroine's intrepid spirit. 

Eightysomething Sheila Hancock is up in the attic recalling adventures with her father when husband Donald Pelmear dies in his wheelchair in the front room. Daughter Wendy Morgan chides her mother for having a fry-up on the morning she is due to visit the Ivy Manor retirement home. But the prospect of fading away in slow-motion doesn't appeal to Hancock and Morgan is frustrated by her refusal to co-operate. She is even more upset when she discovers her mother's old diaries after the house is sold and learns that not only did Hancock not love the controlling and parsimonious Pelmear, but that she had also considered raising a child to be a duty rather than an act of love. 

Unable to prevent Morgan from storming out into the rain, Hancock tosses the treacherous memoir on the fire. But she retrieves the postcard that her estranged father had sent her suggesting that they make up while climbing Suilven and decides to take the Caledonian Sleeper from Euston to Inverness. As she disembarks, however, she is knocked over by Kevin Guthrie and girlfriend Amy Manson, as the latter rushes for her train and Guthrie offers to take Hancock to her hotel in Lochinver in his Land Rover. 

They pass through glorious Highland scenery, only for Hancock to discover she has arrived a day early and that there isn't a room to be had anywhere because of the annual fishing festival. So, Guthrie puts her up in his room and Hancock is appalled by the state of the bathroom. She is also surprised to discover the living-room floor covered with sleeping Scotsman after Guthrie's pals drag him out for a night's drinking and Hancock is about to cancel her reservation and head home when the sight of a slumbering pensioner reminds her that she is here to prove something to herself. 

Wandering into the nearby camping shop, she finds Guthrie behind the counter with his chirpy pal Paul Brannigan. While Guthrie fetches a gas bottle for Hancock's stove, Brannigan convinces her that it would be folly to attempt Suilven without an expert guide and she agrees to pay £800 for his services over the next four days - providing they throw in a new stove for free. However, she also deducts the price of some new walking boots after Guthrie loses one of her wellingtons in the loch while trying to wash it after Hancock gets stuck in some mud during their first trek. Unconcerned that he also fell in while trying to recover it, Hancock proves testy when he shows her how to assemble her new stove. But she enjoys having a spending spree in the shop that evening and smiles with quiet satisfaction when she makes tea in her hotel room with the stove after the kettle fails to work.

The next day, Guthrie takes Hancock to the beach. She paddles while he builds Suilven out of sand and shows her the three-day route he proposes to take after they row across the loch. He is taken aback when she taunts him with a crab, but she is touched by his gift of the small stone that he had used as her stand-in on the sand mountain. She washes it in the bath that night and removes her wedding ring and is raring to go when Guthrie proposes a rowing lesson. Hancock is amused when he turns out to be hopeless, but they make it far enough from the shore for Guthrie to cast a fishing line. 

Enjoying the peace, Hancock explains how Pelmear had disliked her father and had prevented her from going camping with him. Thus, when he had sent her the postcard of Suilven, she had been determined to go. But, in the middle of an argument with Pelmear, he had suffered a stroke and never spoke another word during the three decades that she had to care for him. To lighten the mood, they have a race to erect their tents and Guthrie has to cook the supper when Hancock wins. He talks her into sipping cider from a can and she revels in the tranquility of the idyllic spot. But Guthrie says it's tough for young people to find a niche in such a remote place and wonders whether he and Manson are doing the right thing in taking on a loan that will take 25 years to pay off. 

That night, Hancock puts on a long red dress over her boots to visit the local bar. She gives Guthrie a card in which she calls him `the world's best teacher'. But, while he is touched, Manson finds the sentiments a bit twee before she rushes off to take a phone call. A drunken Brannigan comes to the table and charmlessly comments on Hancock's age, prompting her to retreat to the washroom to remove her bright red lipstick. As she returns, she hears Brannigan calling her `an old bag' and she slips and falls when he tries to steer her on to the dance floor. 

Convinced she's too old to scale the peak, Hancock packs her bag and leaves her new equipment in her room. Guthrie runs her back to the station, but refuses to accept her money because he had promised to take her up Suilven. When she protests she's in no fit state, he forces her out of the vehicle and leaves her with a mountain bike to make her way to Inverness. Realising he has taken her luggage, Hancock has no option but to cycle to Lochinver. But Guthrie is waiting for her on the route and they ride to get a fine view of the mountain before perching on the rocks near the lighthouse to make their final plans. 

The next day, however, Hancock announces that she is going to make the ascent alone and reluctantly agrees to take Guthrie's phone in case she gets into difficulty. He drops her off a fair way from the loch and she makes steady time in the breezy sunshine. She needs help pushing the boat into the water from German hiker Daniela Bräuer, but rows confidently until she drops an oar and is fortunate to drift to the bank without coming a cropper. Pitching her tent, she cooks supper and is reading when Guthrie checks she is doing okay. During the night, she is woken by the bellowing of some deer and is stunned by the beauty of the starry sky. 

A combination of long shots, drone swoops and timelapse cloud sequences help Hancock on her way the following morning. But, while she strides out, Guthrie feels hemmed in at a party to celebrate Manson getting the loan. As a storm gathers outside, he becomes increasingly concerned for Hancock's safety and leaves the bash with Manson fuming at him for letting an old dear tackle Suilven alone and for lacking the maturity to be her partner. Having recklessly decided to plough on in the darkness, Hancock has her tent blown away in a downpour and she is preparing to hunker down for the night under a tree when something urges her to venture on and she finds an old bothy with a fire miraculously burning in the grate. 

She wakes to find Calum Macrae making her tea and porridge and is glad that he has recovered her rucksack. Leaving her rescuer her cherished postcard by way of explanation and feeling the sun on her face, Hancock girds herself for one last effort, only to struggle in excruciating slo-mo as the gradient rises. By the time Guthrie catches up with her, she is spark out on the grass and he fears the worst. But she is determined to go on, as she has wasted a life she would change in a heartbeat and she urges Guthrie not to make the same mistakes. Ignoring his insistence that getting this far is not a failure, Hancock clambers to her feet to tilt at the summit. Together, they conquer Suilven and Guthrie beams with pride as he leaves Hancock to take the final steps by herself. Gazing out across the majestic terrain below, she places her stone on the rocks as proof of her achievement.

The only way to start any assessment of this modest, but enjoyable movie is by commending the courage and commitment of 83 year-old Sheila Hancock, who braved the elements and no little danger to complete her memorable performance. She is solidly supported in converting the clichés of the odd couple scenario into creditably amusing and affecting incidents by the affable Kevin Guthrie. But this is very much Hancock's picture, as the camera lingers on her wonderfully watchful face and twinkling eyes, as she overcomes both her own doubts and regrets, as well as her physical limitations. 

Hunter and editor Otto Stothert rather overdo the cross-cutting between the anguished close-ups and August Jacobsson's evocative vistas when the going starts to get tough. Moreover, Debbie Wiseman's score swells a touch too effusively, as the friends are reunited and strike out for glory. But their hands are somewhat forced by the steepling melodramatics of Elizabeth O'Halloran's screenplay, which is much more intriguing when exploring Hancock's relationship with daughter Wendy Morgan than it is in contriving a bond with a twentysomething stranger whose travails are far too sketchily limned. Perhaps Hunter and O'Halloran should have taken heed of the play of light and shade on Suilven.