I don’t remember how this one got put on my “to watch” list. Probably a combination of seeing the trailer in the cinema and wanting to watching something a bit different from the usual fare. Romantic films very rarely make it onto the annual “best of” lists and for all of its quirks and faults, this one definitely does count as a romantic film.

Unfortunately, this film turned out to be something of a dud.  It’s about an aged English couple who embark on a week-end trip in Paris to rekindle the romance of their honeymoon. But after some 30+ years of marriage, plenty of mutual recriminations and resentments have built up. Combined with the stresses and worries of adult life, this makes romance elusive to say the least no matter how pretty Paris might be.

The best thing about this film is the performance of its two leads, Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan. Critics usually like to praise on-screen couples for their chemistry. In this case however, the chemistry lies in the easy familiarity of the two both in body language and in how naturally they exchange barbs and retorts. They convincingly portray a couple who have ungracefully aged together, too used to each other to break up but too tired of each other to appreciate their relationship.

The rest of the film however is a wreck. The scriptwriter seems worried that a worn-down marriage by itself won’t generate enough drama, and so contrives to add wrench after wrench into the works, culminating in a full-blown crisis that threatens to overshadow everything. This confuses the focus of the story. It also causes me to lose any sympathy whatsoever for the couple who come across as idiots who can’t stop whining and bickering long enough to resolve what are after all eminently solvable problems.

I even see signs of misogyny in the script since the wife is especially poorly characterized. She keeps walking away when upset instead of staying to fix problems or explaining her actions. She irresponsibly spends money the couple doesn’t have. This is a nasty cheat on the director’s part because while the character should know that they can’t afford it, this is kept from the audience until nearly the end. All this just to create an artificial emergency to beset the protagonists with.

Worst of all, the climax seems to be a celebration of mediocrity, complete with an unearned sappy ending that comes out of nowhere. As much as I like watching Jeff Goldblum in a movie, his character’s reactions here make no sense at all. He retains an idiotic bemusement at the couple’s antics no matter what they do, not bothering to express contrition when he learns how badly he has misjudged their plight nor sympathy for the crisis they find themselves in.

The end result is that the promising premise and good acting are both ruined by the lack of confidence that these elements alone, properly developed, are more than enough material to make a great film. Sadly for the people behind this project, a film that intelligently succeeds at what this movie was trying but failing to do already exists. It was even released in the same year. It’s called Before Midnight.