{"id":296910,"date":"2026-02-18T06:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T06:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/296910\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T06:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T06:13:08","slug":"lesley-manville-ciaran-hinds-muted-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/296910\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesley Manville & Ciar\u00e1n Hinds’ Muted Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt\u2019s always tricky to make a dynamic film about quiet people with hidden feelings, and there are no better actors than Lesley Manville<\/a> and Ciar\u00e1n Hinds<\/a> to reveal the unspoken depths of such characters. They come through with everything they have in understated yet deeply felt performances as Stella and Gerry, who are going through the motions of a long marriage. But even these two can\u2019t quite bring Midwinter Break to life, intelligent and thoughtful though its concept is. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe film, based on Bernard MacLaverty<\/a>\u2018s 2017 novel, feels as if it still belongs on the page, not because it needs more action but because this ordinary couple\u2019s problems seem so routine and unsurprising, their inner lives so veiled. \u00a0Even with its promise of a secret to be revealed and the twist of Stella\u2019s increasingly strong religious faith, the film is often as calm and flat as the marriage at its center.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMidwinter Break\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tExcessively quiet.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRelease date: Friday, Feb. 20 (Focus Features)
Cast: Lesley Manville, Ciar\u00e1n Hinds, Niamh Cusack, Julie Lamberton, Ed Sayer
Director: Polly Findlay
Writers: Bernard MacLaverty, Nick Payne
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRated PG-13,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 30 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe couple moved from Belfast to Glasgow years ago after a trauma we see briefly in flashback early in the film. The young, pregnant Stella (Julie Lamberton) is caught in the crossfire and shot during the Troubles. The film starts with Manville\u2019s voiceover saying, \u201cWe never speak about what happened in Belfast.\u201d Now, she says, they are \u201cexiles from each other,\u201d silently eating dinner across the table while he reads a newspaper. She goes alone to Catholic Mass at Christmastime while he, a retired architect, stays home with a drink and a book. Their son is grown and away. Manville and Hinds fit easily in the roles, although these preliminary stages of the film are especially predictable.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Stella surprises Gerry with a Christmas present of a trip to Amsterdam it\u2019s easy to see that she has an agenda, but he seems not to notice. In Amsterdam, where most of the film is set and was shot, the familiar pattern continues. In their hotel room, he sneaks drinks and she pretends not to notice. They have sex once. At a restaurant when she wants to have a serious talk about why she orchestrated the trip, he\u2019d rather order dinner.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe director, Polly Findlay<\/a>, an acclaimed theater director in the U.K., makes the transition to film smoothly. Her style is graceful and steady as she remains focused on the characters, knowing just when to stay close and still on their faces and when to follow them as they, and the film, play tourist in Amsterdam. The city is photographed to look lovely even in the dead of winter, as they walk along canals and visit historic sites. At the Rijksmuseum, Gerry is more engaged than Stella. At the Anne Frank House, Stella is deeply moved. But the film seems to be marking time in a prettily-shot, conventional way.<\/p>\n

\n\tMore important to the story, they visit a place Stella has researched, the Begijnhof, a group of historic houses dating back to the Middle Ages, where a community of single women devoted themselves to God, living like nuns but without taking religious vows. What she wants there is her secret for just a little while.<\/p>\n

\n\tThroughout, the screenplay underserves the actors. It was written by MacLaverty and Nick Payne<\/a>, who also wrote the play Constellations and screenplays including the recent Florence Pugh-Andrew Garfield weeper We Live in Time<\/a>. The characters are meant to be shut off from each other, but maybe not this shut off from what we know about them. When they visit a church, Stella looks transported, and Gerry refers to their past, saying, \u201cWhat happened to you was not miraculous.\u201d But faith itself is never really developed as a theme. The political backdrop of Northern Ireland is even less of a factor. Whether those gaps are a feature or a bug of this thinly-written screenplay makes no difference in the end.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOne major scene is the exception to that flatness, and Manville makes the absolute most of it. Stella goes back to the Begijnhof alone and talks to a friendly fellow Irishwoman (Niamh Cusack<\/a>) they had met briefly on their first visit. She pours out the story of her past and the intense religious thoughts that entered her mind at that life-changing moment in Belfast. Manville delivers one of her most magnificent performances in the scene, which is saying a lot. Without melodrama, she makes the monologue so genuine that you can feel the weight Stella has carried around all those years, why it has haunted her and why she wants to make a change now.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the same time, Gerry is in a record story also thinking about that day in Belfast. Hinds does as much as he can with his character, but we know so little about how he got to be this withdrawn alcoholic that we are left with a one-sided view of the marriage. Although Manville and Hinds are always worth watching, it\u2019s obviously a problem when the actors and the scenery so thoroughly overshadow a film\u2019s story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s always tricky to make a dynamic film about quiet people with hidden feelings, and there are no…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[150387,150388,146,85,46,138773,397,150389,150390,150391],"class_list":["post-296910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-bernard-maclaverty","tag-ciaru00e1n-hinds","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-lesley-manville","tag-movies","tag-niamh-cusack","tag-nick-payne","tag-polly-findlay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}