Midwinter Break: Marital Drama Has Big Potential, Small Payoff

By Kim Hughes

Rating: C+

There is a mountain of dramatic possibility, most of it unmined, in Midwinter Break, which manages to be frustrating yet kind of boring at the same time.

The new film, based on the acclaimed 2017 novel by Bernard MacLaverty — who also co-wrote the screenplay — offers many tantalizing narrative opportunities: crisis of faith, crumbling marriage, secrets, substance abuse. But none are fully developed and some (end-of-story spoiler withheld) just seem implausible.

The film’s saving grace is actors Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds, both terrific, who do so much with relatively little. Their immense commitment to the roles, very often captured in extreme close-up, along with lovely on-location scenes shot in Amsterdam, offer just enough umph to make the film watchable if not must-see.

Midwinter Breaks opens in Northern Ireland amid The Troubles. A smiling, pregnant young woman casually walks through a summer day that is quickly shattered by gunfire. Clearly something bad has happened but what, exactly, is tucked away for future revelation.

Fast-forward to present-day Glasgow. Longtime marrieds Stella and Gerry (Manville and Hinds) are about to holiday in the Netherlands’ capital, a rejuvenating gift from wife to husband. Both seem giddy on arrival despite the bleak overhead skies and perennial need for wearing bulky scarves.

The couple naps, dines, sightsees, and even has sex. But it soon emerges that Stella — a person of both intense Catholic faith and disarming mood swings — is haunted and increasingly, perceptibly estranged from her husband. Gerry, meanwhile, has a lust for the bottle. As the holiday progresses, the happy veneer begins to chip away.

The film’s climax, whispered in the trailer, finds Stella confessing to a virtual stranger something that happened the day portrayed at the film’s start, and her subsequent inability to make good on a debt she thinks she owes as a result. The scene is at once heartrending and baffling; Manville is thoroughly convincing but the logic is pretzeled.

There are some very lovely scenes in Midwinter Break, among them a stirring visit to Anne Frank House (how could it be any other way?) as well as a spontaneous encounter with a pair of horses in the nighttime streets of Amsterdam and many leisurely walks alongside its famed canals.

But much as I had hoped to love it given its cast and source material, Midwinter Break just never took flight. Not all great books make great movies.

Midwinter Break. Directed by Polly Findlay. Starring Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds. In theatres February 20.