{"id":184725,"date":"2025-10-08T05:32:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T05:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/184725\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T05:32:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T05:32:07","slug":"film-club-review-aimee-lou-woods-sweet-smart-romcom-revives-the-lost-art-of-yearning-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/184725\/","title":{"rendered":"Film Club review \u2013 Aimee Lou Wood\u2019s sweet, smart romcom revives the lost art of yearning | Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aimee Lou Wood made her screen debut, as the endearingly unfiltered Aimee in Sex Education, in 2019. It\u2019s been a deservedly busy six years since then for the actor, involving three more seasons of Sex Education, co-starring with David Morrissey in the sitcom Daddy Issues<\/a>, a major role in the triumphant third season of The White Lotus<\/a>, plus stage and film work, too.<\/p>\n

On the small screen, Wood specialises in vulnerability \u2013 the kind of characters who survive life despite having a layer of skin missing. You watch in the nail-biting hope that their courage will be enough to see them through and that the people they meet will be kind. It makes sense that Film Club, Wood\u2019s first foray into writing (with Ralph Davis), is built round another variation on this theme.<\/p>\n

Evie (Woods) and Noa (Nabhaan Rizwan, so good in everything and just perfect here) have been best friends since university, where they started a weekly film club that has endured ever since. These days it is usually just the two of them, a sweet, gentle, funny pair, dressing up in suitable costumes every Friday night after Noa clocks off work as a family lawyer, and enjoying their time together. Now, however, they do so in Evie\u2019s mum\u2019s garage because Evie hasn\u2019t been able to leave the house since her \u201cwobble\u201d six months ago, the exact nature of which is gradually revealed over the six-episode run. Evie set-dresses the garage appropriately for the film every week (an abundance of tinfoil, tubing and bubble wrap for Alien, huge flowers and lollipops for The Wizard of Oz and so on). It is a cocoon, a refuge and potentially a dependency.<\/p>\n

Then Noa is offered a job in Bristol and must take it. For the first time their friendship will be tested by distance, and the consequences of Evie\u2019s agoraphobia made yet more oppressive. And, of course, it means any unspoken feelings that may or may not exist become harder to ignore. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and especially so when you cannot visit on a whim, or you spy hints of possible love interests on the new horizons one half of the unit is facing towards.<\/p>\n

Around the central relationship, which does much to restore the lost art of yearning to its rightful place, are a variety of noisier ones offered by Evie\u2019s family. There is her mother, Suz (Suranne Jones, most recently seen in the virtually back-to-back series Hostage<\/a> and Frauds<\/a> \u2013 it is Jones\u2019s world now and we just live in it, which is absolutely fine by me), who is a wonderful creation. Fiercely loving, endlessly energetic and high-maintenance, you can see the fear for her daughter electrifying every nerve beneath the impeccably groomed surface. If she stops moving, she\u2019ll collapse. She inadvertently terrifies Noa but has made Evie\u2019s boyfriend, Josh (Adam Long), virtually part of the family. His is a simple soul whose sunny outlook and ever-readiness for an outing (\u201cI think we need a good fat potter, Suz,\u201d and off they go round the local department store) soothes the jangling in the maternal breast. Her other daughter, Evie\u2019s sister Izzie (Liv Hill), has a darker outlook and drier wit that does not.<\/p>\n

A wonderful creation \u2026 Aimee Lou Wood (left) as Evie and Suranne Jones as Suz in Film Club. Photograph: BBC\/Gaumont\/Ben Blackall\/PA<\/p>\n

Film Club slots in to the growing subcategory of comedy about mental health, particularly women\u2019s, written (or co-written) by women. It is perhaps not as dense or sophisticated as, for example, Aisling Bea\u2019s This Way Up <\/a>(about a twentysomething recovering from \u201ca teeny-tiny nervous breakdown\u201d), or Nancy Harris\u2019s The Dry<\/a> (about the whys and wherefores of alcoholism) and it is very different in tone from the brutally confrontational Such Brave Girls<\/a>. But like all of them, it has a deep intelligence and psychological acuity underlying and informing all the jokes, and like them it also makes a point of looking beyond the suffering caused by mental illness to an individual and out at all the ways in which it can change dynamics and, especially without help, frustrate lives.<\/p>\n

Film Club is a quiet, careful but confident thing. It was clearly written by two people who know where their strengths lie (above and beyond Wood\u2019s startlingly accurate Buffalo Bill impression and Rizwan\u2019s flawless channelling of Jeff Goldblum) and it is impeccably cast. A bit more torque and a bit less whimsy might be welcome, but that is to quibble. Wood\u2019s star and CV continue to shine.<\/p>\n

Film Club aired on BBC Three and is on iPlayer now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aimee Lou Wood made her screen debut, as the endearingly unfiltered Aimee in Sex Education, in 2019. It\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-184725","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}