Love, as a couple of chroniclers have suggested over the years, is a tricky blighter. Terence Davies' languorous adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play underscores the point in 98 minutes of impeccable drama that draws from Rachel Weisz her finest screen performance to date.
Anger and regret suffuse the honey-glowed screen in what becomes a long, silent, scream emanating from a woman who is smart enough to know she is powerless to resist the destructive folly of her heart.
Matters do not begin well for Hester, but they do begin dramatically, as she inhales the gas fire in her ropy lodgings in the hope of oblivion.
The dizzy moments of euphoria that follow are a swirl of violins and eroticism as she recalls the days when passion tossed her out the placid Garden of Eden, unable to return.
Teddy (Tom Hiddlestone) back then was a goofy, irritating former RAF pilot, high on gestures, low on generosity and their lop-sided infatuation was enough to make her quiet marriage to dutiful Sir William Collyer (Simon Russell Beale) instantaneously unbearable.
"Beware of passion. It always turns into something ugly," says Sir William's sniffy mum.
"What would you replace it with?" asks Hester.
"Guarded enthusiasm is much safer."
"And much duller."
And that is Hester's lot, equidistant from insufficient and too much love, letting passion and anger stale to regret.
Rattigan, whose work is liberally re-worked by Davies, presents Sir William as her equal but there is nothing in his tender trap or lamentable entreaties to lure her back to the marital home. But there is also nothing that she shares with cad Teddy that matches that marital affection.
Between the devil and deep, blue sea, you see, that is where unrequited love resides.
And there we hang, sometimes eloquently, sometimes indulgently, sometimes selfishly for the course of the film after Hester survives her dalliance with self-destruction.
The turmoil of love and the repression of the age make for brilliantly cinematic contrast and comparisons with Brief Encounter are obvious. Rousing sing-songs down the rub-a-dub make trembling lips, clipped phrases and watery eyes irredeemably poignant.
A tragedy, says Simon Russell Beale's Sir William - a performance beautifully balanced mix of plaintive boyishness and paternal assurance.
No, just sad, says Hester, lethally aware of her own inconsequence.
This confident, trembling evocation of a heart breaking in slow motion is a wonderful book-end to a year that has witnessed the restoration of Rattigan as the master calibrator of the heart's dark places.
– From November 2011
