As one of our most durable institutions, marriage is also one of humanity’s most fragile. At around a 50 % failure rate, it is vulnerable to the vagaries of boredom and infidelity most of all.
The former is the province of director Polly Findley’s Midwinter Break, a slight drama about longtime married couple, Stella (Lesley Manville) and Gerry (Cirian Hinds), who take a break to Amsterdam and find their marriage challenged not as the freewheeling world-class city, but as their own frailties endanger its existence.
Adapted from Bernard MacLaverty novel, the tale tells of Stella’s questioning her status as a wife and mother with nothing left to give, and he is an overweight, retired architect drinking too much and giving her too little satisfaction. Amsterdam does offer her a chance in the form of a former religious house catering to just such unhappy women.
Even though the place no longer houses these women, the truth is that no amount of religiosity will do for them what they themselves must do. While Stella and Gerry eventually must face their weaknesses themselves, they do so in an airport lounge, a fitting symbol of transition into the later part of their life.
Most married couples face the fact that passion has ebbed and even grandchildren can’t supply the comfort a spouse should. For Stella and Gerry, her need to find purpose and his to slide back his drinking and apathy provide a template for survival, giving us a low-key drama not solvable in a brief drama suggestive of a roadmap to success as they hold hands into the future.
Midwinter Break is a pleasure as director Polly Findley makes even the silence between the couple meaningful especially for an audience that appreciates longtime silences holding importance like conversation between best friends.
Although in this drama there is little “drama” by contemporary blockbuster standards, it is full of meaning that will resonate for married couples looking forward.
Midwinter Break
Director:Polly Findley (Treasure Island)
Screenplay: Bernard MacLaverty, based on the novel by. Nick Payne (We Live in Time)
Cast: Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris)
Cirian Hinds (Belfast)
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take (recently listed by Feedspot as two of the ten best NPR Movie Podcasts) out of WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio.Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com