Gideon's Daughter

This is definitely not a film for everyone. But I was eager to see it and happy to get it on DVD, as I live outside the UK and don't get the BBC. Bill Nighy, Miranda Richardson and Robert Lindsay together in one film is must, no matter what the film might be about.

This is a slow film, things happen almost in "real time", and the characters are very realistic. I work in a shop in a big train station, I get to see the most different people every day. People like Gideon or Stella do exist, and why not make a film about characters like them? The most beautiful or rather endearing scene, enchanting maybe even, was when Stella and Gideon lie next to each other in Stella's bed and talk about their lives and loved ones. A very quiet scene, and endlessly touching to watch.

Someone else said here, people probably have to be quite creative to understand this film. This might be true. You have to let go of conventional films a bit to be able to embrace this one. But if you're open enough to new impressions, then this is the right film for you. Or if you just want to see excellent performances by aforementioned actors.

How can be this simply story so touching? I kept asking this question for hours. Is it a parent-child relationship that everyone of us knows (at least from one of its sides) or is it something more? Or is it that lazy tempo that makes this movie so real? And I can't forget the totally beautiful song performed by Emily Blunt (Natasha). Bill Nighy's (Gideon) acting is perfect, too. Every scene in this film fits in it accurately and although the ending is filled with pathos, you'll have to like it. Because you want to believe that life goes that way. You have to see it and the best option is to watch it with your parents. It says things people should tell, but they don't.

"Gideon's Daughter" brings to a TV film a trend that is mostly obvious in literary fiction – the middle-aged man who thinks he is the center of the universe and the whole world revolves around him, and faces some kind of break down if any of his women show a bit of independence.

Written and directed by playwright Stephen Poliakoff, he mines similar territory as Cheever, Updike, Ford, Amis, Roth, etc. thrust into the center of English celebrity and political culture. The theme is even awkwardly made redundant by an odd structure of having another middle-aged man tell the tale to another pretty young woman and a mysterious kid.

Here, Bill Nighy's media consultant only perceives such events as Princess Diana's death or the upcoming millennium in terms of how it affects him. In press interviews, Nighy has said that Poliakoff intentionally directed him to play the main character as "stripped" but one certainly doesn't see how this catatonic schmoozer even got to his professional pinnacle. His past and current sexual adventures certainly seem more male fantasy than anything based on his charisma of any kind.

Tom Hardy, who was quite captivating as Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester in the recent Queen Elizabeth I mini-series, shows much more suitable feistiness, as a cross between Jeremy Piven's agent in "Entourage" and Bradley Whitford's canny adviser in "The West Wing."

Miranda Richardson has the stereotyped role we've seen many times before of the quirky stranger (she dresses like an old hippie) from another class and lifestyle, but with a pained past with a child, who tempts him to play hooky and more. It is startlingly different for this genre that she is close to age appropriate.

A creepy centerpiece, and repeating motif, is the consultant's daughter (Emily Blunt getting to show little of the passion she displayed in "My Summer of Love") singing a lovely ballad in tribute to philanderer Georges Simenon's suicidal daughter. The story is particularly weakened by not seeing more of Blunt's life when she's not being the adoring daughter.

I really didn't get that a neglectful father who suddenly discovers he has paternal feelings is then to be considered "obsessive" rather than finally normal, even as she's about to leave the nest. His growing realization of his feelings is the best part of the film but a theme that all parents and grown children need to reconcile as adults-to-adults just drifts off.

I have now seen 'Gideon's Daughter' twice and still don't quite know how the man does it, whilst in it's glow you think it the most beautiful and spellbinding story and one wishes that it would never end. But once it does and you stand back, you realise it is actually about nothing at all, weak on story and overly sentimental and abusing the clichéd rules of scriptwriting (no telephone conversations, no narration, no flashbacks etc) with aloof disregard. You suddenly understand that a work of such quality does not have to follow antiquated misguidance, but can exist outside the usual trends and survive purely on it's own merits, characters, dialogue and empathy reign! SEE IT!

I just love Poliakoff - apart from 'Perfect Strangers' which bored me immensely. I found 'Shooting The Past' to be breathtaking, but 'Gideon's Daughter' occupies a different space altogether. It's about a lot of things - celebrity, grief - expressed and unexpressed - forgiveness and redemption. It's also about love and friendship, and a place where the two overlap.

I watched Bill Nighy closely throughout, and for me he never put a foot - or a hand, or a glance, or stare - wrong. Equally as exquisite was Miranda Richardson as Stella, the divorced woman whose son has died, and whose ex-husband (played by David Westhead) cannot let go of the need to 'right' a wrong.

In a way, this film is about nothing at all, and yet it encompasses so much that I'm finding it difficult to review. Don't expect to understand it all - I didn't, but that could be my short-coming. But I loved it so much I want to see it again and again. I just hope others love it as much as did I.