ALBATROSS Soars On Demand → On Demand Weekly

ALBATROSS Soars On DemandJanuary 13, 2012

IFC Films

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: ALBATROSS (IFC Films).

ALBATROSS
By Cynthia Kane

I was surprised to discover ALBATROSS is Niall MacCormack’s feature film debut; he’s done so much excellent television work in the UK (“Margaret Thatcher: A Long Walk from Finchley”, “Wallander: Firewall” with Kenneth Branagh) and well, I simply assumed he’d done plenty of UK indie features as well. Not so.

Filmed on the Isle of Man, ALBATROSS is then an assured first feature with a luminous cast including two young women whom I’m certain we will see much more of in the coming years. Jessica Brown Findlay – who’s already been seen this side of the pond as the young suffragette and lefty, Lady Sybil of “Downton Abbey” - plays Emelia Conan Doyle, a local girl, wanna-be writer, convinced that she’s related to Sir Arthur, and who lives with her elderly grandparents after her mother’s suicide.

At 17 and already out of school, she comes to work as a maid in Cliff House, a B&B overlooking the Irish Sea, where she meets Beth (Felicity Jones – CEMETERY JUNCTION, LIKE CRAZY, THE TEMPEST – directed by Julie Taymor with Helen Mirren), daughter of Cliff House’s owners, Jonathan and Joa. Despite the fact that Jonathan’s played by the brilliant German actor Sebastian Koch (THE LIVES OF OTHERS) and the imitable Julia Ormond (MY WEEK WITH MARILYN, THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON) who plays Joa, it’s the two teens that steal the show here.

It’s their story, their movie, despite all.

Jonathan’s a writer, or was… successful in writing one great book called Cliff House (and thus the family moved here) and Joa’s a frustrated actress, who’s all but given up her career and has become a kind of stage mother to their youngest daughter. Beth’s in her last year of secondary school, is conscientious and super-studious, overly serious and longing to leave the tense and frustrating world of Cliff House, make her way to Oxford … if she’s accepted. In walks Emelia into their lives one day and nothing is again the same. Beth is entranced, captivated by Emelia’s free spirit, Jonathan is seduced and stirred out of his writer’s block by her working class spunk and beauty, Joa’s immediately angst-ridden about the influence she could have on her daughter about to leave the nest and perhaps jealous of her own youth left behind. And Emelia’s, for once, the certain of attention and thrives on it. Yet the fun, naughtiness and attention don’t last, as what she’s really longing for is a friend, which she finds in Beth.

What’s doesn’t quite work here is the film can’t make up its mind what it is: a coming of age story, a comedy, a drama with comic undertones? Certainly the film really feels like its found its way when the girls’ budding relationship becomes the foreground of the story. There’s a lightheartedness here with sensitive coming of age undertones, just not fully explored, which could have provided for a deeper, richer work that these two actresses are fully capable of and more. It’s as if the film in the end doesn’t know what it wants to be. Screenwriter Tamzin Rafn references JUNO and Diablo Cody as a strong influencing factor in writing this quasi-autobiographical script, and I’m not clear where the confusion comes in: was it in the writing, in the direction, pressure from the producers to make it funnier, faster, more accessible?

Both Sebastian Koch and Julia Ormond are terrific actors. No complaints here with the exception that Julia Ormond is terribly underused; then again perhaps her participation helped to finance the film. She’s generous in this way, appearing in miniscule roles in many indies, adding great nuanced performances in supporting roles. But she missed here appearing in just a handful of scenes in what could have added more drama and tension to this story that teeters on being too thin.

ALBATROSS premiered last summer at the Edinburgh Film Festival to wonderful reviews and has made a sparkling debut in the UK and perfect for late teens-early 20’s market.

For the rest of us, it might not be something

to make a whole evening out of,

but it’s the absolute best kind of film to watch

on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon ON DEMAND.

- Cynthia Kane

Cynthia Kane reviews documentaries for On Demand Weekly. She is a writer and Sr Programming Manager for [ ITVS], overseeing the International Initiative for funding in their SF office. Prior she’s had many incarnations from actor to writer to producer. She co-created DOCday on Sundance Channel.