Metro, August 2022
Ah, the “enduring” marriage. The comfortable silences stacking the dishwasher, the inconsequential enquiries about a dull working day… the seething over-reaction to the lack of a jacket potato on an airport restaurant’s menu.
It’s this seemingly ridiculous fight that Sean Bean’s introspective Ian picks with his wife Emma (Nicola Walker) over her innocuous choice of chips that introduces us to their painfully believable world. It’s full of worry about their child, their elderly parents, their jobs and the ‘is this it’ desperation of middle age. As the plane taxis, they hiss sweary insults at each other. As it takes off, Ian reaches for Emma’s hand again. There’s a quiet romance in that small gesture.
Writer and director Stefan Golaszewski made his name with the sitcoms Mum and Him & Her, but this is an altogether more considered and minimalist relationship study. Bean plays Ian with the kind of diminished sadness where a hesitant shuffle into a job interview or a gym (he’s recently been made redundant) says more than a hundred lines. Walker’s Emma is more expressive, more obviously searching for that elusive happiness away from home. Feistier, but more forgiving, too.
Together, they create moments of great drama – a visit to a graveyard ends up with Emma weeping on a bench. Ian makes no effort to bridge the obvious gap between them to console his wife. Just when you want to shake him for not giving Emma a hug, he breaks down himself. In the very next scene they are jokingly discussing the price of cashew nuts.
Which is not to say there aren’t also points where literally – like in marriage and life – nothing happens at all. When their daughter Jess (Chantelle Alle) comes home with her needy boyfriend, she gives her dad every opportunity to chat to her – but he silently sweeps leftovers into the compost bin instead. She leaves, as exasperated as the viewers.
Yet when Ian does speak, it has a soulful power. Walking home after seeing Jess play a gig, he makes a laboured point about the difference between young love and what 27 years of ups and downs do to the fire in a relationship.
“Are you still talking?” says Emma with a smile, as she pulls her husband aside to kiss him.
It’s a truly lovely moment in a completely authentic marriage, given life by an acting masterclass from Sean Bean and Nicola Walker.
