Albatros

A seaside inn is run the Fischer family, consisting of two daughters and their parents. Their lives are in a rut as they mark time, day to day.

When we first meet Emilia, she is lighting firecrackers and dropping them in a barrel, inciting action by the local police. She is an irreverent 17-year-old who likes to break the rules and shake things up. When she is introduced into the Fischer household, she is like a spark that lights a fuse.

The actions that follow are sometimes predictable, sometimes not. But the result of this volatile situation is what the viewer must wait for.

The film's title is a reference to Coleridge's Albatross; the film reveals how it applies differently to three of the characters. It is up to the viewer to determine in what other ways the title refers to burdens the characters must bear.

Albatross is a delightful film. The story is charming even as it is fraught with dangers. The acting is top notch. I would not change one performer. The background music ranges, appropriately, from whimsical to poignant.

This British film is a drama filled with comedy. And it shows how life's resolutions sometimes come from tragic moments.

There are some characters in this film, there really are, and they are all so very different, and, at the same time, very alike. Emilia, at times quite brilliantly played by Jessica Brown Findlay, is the superficially confident teen who commands the scene and will not be put down easily. Beth, well played by Felicity Jones, is the girl who likes the rebel instinct of Emilia, but is waiting on a place at Oxford. The two girls, and their families, live in a fictitious English south coast town. Beth's parents own a hotel/guest house proceeds from the only book her father has successfully authored. There is much friction between Beth's parents.

The plot develops around the friendship between Emilia and Beth, and then between Emilia and Beth's father, and takes us down a number of diversionary routes until we get to the revelations that make the story tie up its loose ends.

Not entirely satisfactory or convincing as a film but it has some promising acting from its younger stars. Well worth a rental.

Emelia Conan Doyle (Jessica Brown Findlay) claims to be a descendant of the great writer Arthur Conan Doyle. She takes a cleaning job at a seaside hotel owned by Jonathan Fischer (Sebastian Koch). He's struggling with writer's block and holed up in the attic. He has combative wife Joa (Julia Ormond), bookish daughter Beth (Felicity Jones), and six year old Posy. Emelia befriends Beth who is applying for Oxford. Emelia claims to be a writer but she can't live up to her family name. As Jonathan mentors her, they begin an affair.

Jessica Brown Findlay and Felicity Jones are both lovely although this movie may be better if there is a darker, sexier edge. This plays more like a light relationship drama. The story suggests an eroticism that this movie does not have despite Findlay flashing her boobs comically. There is a darker edge that nobody is able to deliver other than Ormond. The story, the performances, and the tone don't completely click.

In the evocative location of the Isle of Man there is Emelia Doyle, a teenager who lives with her grandparents (her mother committed suicide, her father disappeared). She tries to become a writer because she is convinced that she is a descendant of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but in the meantime she only scrapes together menial jobs; then there's a failed writer, Jonathan Fischer, author of a single successful novel on which he lives off a pension, without being able to write anything decent anymore; finally there's the writer's daughter, Bethany, a young girl with no experience due to parents unable to let her go, who aspires to continue her studies at the coveted Oxford University.

A charming comedy with three characters who don't have the courage to take a step forward in their lives: they help each other, almost without wanting to, to give themselves a push, to "rewrite", to become aware of themselves. The film is convincing thanks to a certain irony that amiably mocks the characters, to the delightful naive grace of Felicity Jones (Bethany), to the irreverent, cheeky, sensual but also tenderly defenceless humanity of Jessica Brown Findlay (Emelia), who in the end manages to get rid of her alibi for doing nothing with her life (the albatross around her neck of choleridgian memory) and starts writing seriously. A little-known, rather neglected comedy, but definitely worth a look.

The screenplay was completely believable and the performances were top notch across the entire cast. It's a small story of regular people living regular lives, so no bombast was necessary or desired. Once again, I am disgusted by the film critics assessment of this film. What do these supercilious, arrogant pseudo-writers want? I'm sick of these intellectuals passing judgment on quality works such as these.