鈥淧eople don鈥檛 change,鈥� laments Nick (Jim Broadbent). 鈥淭hey do,鈥� counters his wife, Meg (Lindsay Duncan). 鈥淭hey get worse.鈥�
Such melancholic sentiments permeate every fibre of this well-observed dramedy from director Roger Michell and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi. In fact, it鈥檚 Nick鈥檚 inability to hold his sharp tongue that鈥檚 forced him into early retirement, leaving him the time (but scarcely the money) to embark on a 30th anniversary encore of their Paris honeymoon. Alas, the return to the site of such promise only reinforces their discontentment with the hands that life subsequently dealt them. They launch witty broadsides with impunity but save their most cutting remarks for one another.
Kureishi鈥檚 incisive writing ensures that every memorably acerbic quip is countered by a moment of unsettling honesty. The increasingly fraught script also displays a keen understanding of how behaviour becomes more entrenched and even amplified over time, often leaving us teetering at the precipice of self-parody. (Jeff Goldblum appears as Nick鈥檚 former colleague who鈥檚 devolved into the caricature of a scholarly sophisticate.) Likewise, Kureishi and Michell revel in detailing how long-term partners come to complement one another (for better and worse), lending Nick and Meg the air of a deadpan stand-up duo.
Fittingly, the film doesn鈥檛 build to a grand romantic gesture but rather free falls to a frank cataloguing of failures and disappointments. Broadbent and Duncan land the finish with panache, allowing Kureishi to suggest that even once the bloom is off the rose, it鈥檚 still possible for the stem to remain sturdy and prickly as hell.
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