Before You Go

Seven years after his thrilling movie "Haunted", Lewis Gilbert released his next movie, based on the Olivier Award-winning stage play by Shelagh Stephenson (who also adapted it for the big screen). Some critics (like Gaby Wood from "The Observer) loathed it and tore it into shreds, saying, "It was a shame that Gilbert decided to do another movie", others loved its beauty and serenity.

The movie is a tragic comedy, or a funny tragedy. Basically, it's a deeply moving portrayal of a torn-apart family, the story of three wasted lives, but it's also an ode to the women, or to the strength that only women seem to be capable of.

Julie Walters, who was the star of Gilbert's hit movie "Educating Rita", delivers a stunning performance - probably one of the best performances in her entire career. Joanne Whalley is equally good in her portrayal of Mary, and you can't take your eyes off the gorgeous Patricia Hodge, who's playing their mother. The only bad performance, matter-of-factly, comes from Victoria Hamilton who's overacting in every scene she's in. She seemed to be resistant against Gilbert's masterful direction.

Debbie Wiseman's haunting, compelling score is flowing gently through the film, and the photography leaves you breathless. "Before You Go" was shot almost entirely on location on the Isle of Man (only very few shots were made at Twickenham Studios). Gilbert's sense for beautiful settings has always been unique - even in his three former based-on-stage-play movies ("Alfie", "Educating Rita", and "Shirley Valentine") you could perceive that.

Alas, the talents of John Hannah and Tom Wilkinson, both very fine actors, are basically wasted here. But after all, this is a woman's movie. And a great one.

When their mother passes away, estranged sisters Theresa, Mary and Catherine come back together for the funeral. Theresa is the eldest and expected to hold everything together despite her own stresses. Mary is being "haunted" by visions of her dead mother, bringing buried secrets and pain to the surface – a situation not helped by her already fragile relationship with married lover Mike. Meanwhile youngest sister Catherine seems no different from the last time she was seen – spinning from man to man, keeping everything soft with drug use. As the funeral approaches, secret or buried hurts come out within the family.

From Lewis Gilbert and featuring a great cast when I read the credits in the paper, I had reasonable hopes for this film. Sadly they were mostly dashed in a film that didn't seem to have a handle on what it actually wanted to do. The result of this is that the script is keen to embrace a quick joke or attempts at colourful characters but seems either unwilling or (more likely) unable to get to the heart of the matter and deliver and emotionally engaging film that is full or real hurt, real healing and real people. This leaves the film floating around in a way that is not bad but is certainly not any good – meaning that I got more and more bored as the film went on, to the point where I left the room for five minutes but couldn't be bothered to pause the DVD.

The cast aren't able to do much without the help of writer or director. Walters flaps around but is nothing more than a flustered comedy character who doesn't actually produce laughs. Whalley is handed the greater responsibility and the stronger character but fails to do much with it; she and her mother share the strongest scenes but neither is that good and their scenes lack a real emotional hook. Hamilton is only ever annoying and feels like an easy cliché for the writers, once they had written the first two characters. The male support is so-so mainly because neither Hannah or Wilkinson are really given much to work with and are very much on the edges of the film.

Overall this was a disappointing film that didn't do anything that it had the potential to do. Not bad per se but it certainly isn't any good as it roundly fails to deliver on the promise of complex relationships. The cast offer much but aren't given anything to work with and only do OK. Not really worth a look to be honest.

this movie may not be perfect, and certainly isn't very well known. My friends and i rented it out, purely because, in a 'movie watching' kinda mood, we could find no others on the shelf we were particularly interested in. We didn't expect much, just an hour or two of distraction.

man, were we wrong. this movie is hilarious, poignant, emotional, and delicate. julie walters shines in her role particularly, and despite not always being wonderful, the movie is definately very funny and good entertainment for those who like something a bit more challenging than 'dumb and dumber."

In a film industry where the lack of money spent on script development for the big-budget movies is constantly bemoaned, films like this are supposed to come along and make the viewer yearn for the good old days when movies were rich in character, colour and conversation. After this dire effort, though, I'm back to waiting for the X-Men and Matrix sequels. The cast list suggests better, but the performances across the board are very weak, the characters totally one-dimensional and the story JUST NOT INTERESTING. I suspect it was supposed to be a study of the different ways we deal with personal grief, but the director failed to put this across in any kind of coherent or engaging fashion. I hate to single anyone out for particular criticism, but Joanne Whalley was school-play awful. Save your 90 minutes and do almost anything else.

I am a A Level Drama student and for my final performance my group are performing 'The Memory of Water' the original play by Shelagh Stephenson. As soon as our group read the script we thought it was great, it has plenty of humour and pace and great characters and is a pleasure to read and perform.

So when we discovered this movie version we were expecting a little gem of a film... however this was not the case! Not even the all star cast could save this film from sinking. It was truly disappointing - the acting was poor and the whole mood of the film was completely lack lustre. The directors interpretation completely downplayed all the humour in the play and the witty and bickering tension between the sisters. He turned the play into one long boring non-event.

I would highly recommend the play, but to anyone else performing this play I would give this film version a definite miss as you will only be left disappointed!