Polly Findlay’s barnstorming drama about interpersonal and religious tumult in late middle age is a triumph, swerving any sense of sentimentalism Movies about ageing empty-nesters going on a bittersweet holiday and unexpectedly having to confront something about their relationship are common enough. Roger Michell’s Le Week-End starred Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan as an oldster couple having a Eurostar break in Paris; and in Paolo Virz ì ’s sucrose The Leisure Seeker , Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren impulsively head off in a Winnebago. There is often something soft and fuzzy and depressing in the wrong way about these films’ lenient sunset-sentimentalism – but not so with Polly Findlay’s fiercely sad, spiky and wonderfully acted film, based on a novel by Bernard MacLaverty (the author of Cal). Gerry and Stella, played by Ciarán Hinds and Lesley Manville, are a late-middle-aged couple from Northern Ireland who left for Scotland in the 1970s, traumatised by the Troubles, and are taking a restorative midwinter break in Amsterdam. They appear perfectly happy and affectionate, but Gerry has a drinking problem and Stella feels lonely because Gerry does not share her Catholic faith. In Amsterdam, Stella is struck with epiphanic rapture at the peaceful beauty of the Begijnhof , the city’s enclosed 14th-century courtyard that historically housed unmarried Catholic women who wanted to devote themselves to God. Continue reading...