Hampstead: If this be not a summer movie ….

Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke (Before Sunrise, 1995)

Diane Keaton and Brendan Gleeson (Hampstead, 2017)

“I have nothing of value to offer anyone,” she said to her faintly condescending adult son who seems to imply she should get a paying job … “I have no [sellable] skills”

He: “You think my mother birthed a complete half-wit?”
She: “Is there such a thing as a COMPLETE half-wit?”

Gentle reader,

If, like me, you retain fond memories of Delpy and Hawk endlessly talking during a long day in Paris after they have mutually agreed to get off a train together, you will like this romantic comedy, done in something of the same vein, the walking and talking,

the sitting about

the doing things, like putting back together a shack which has been assaulted, reading, going to bed together,

eating, drinking, fishing for their food …

you will find this movie wonderfully enjoyable.

If, like me, you loathe super-rich phony people who pretend to be your friend, pressure you, undermine you, especially when they are making oodles of money more from connections to corporations, in this case, one that is pulling down a hospital, evicting a squatter (there for 17 years), and when he is gone wrecking his place

and want to feel for all endangered species (even salmon) — the young actor on the right spends his existence handing out petitions and helping other people

you will find this movie wonderfully enjoyable.

Our hero wins out against a dastardly priggish barrister seeking to humiliate and to remove him by having a decent judge (Simon Callow), wise lawyer (Adeel Akhtar), and supportive petitioning demonstrating friends (Hugh Skinner). Unexpectedly he can be allowed to stay in the park and even given the property under a medieval ordinance, as long as he can produce documentary proof he’s been there more than 12 years. He does — with a little help from Emily (and Phil Davis — see below). It is just wonderfully enjoyable to triumph once in a while.

The movie opens up with a cheerful scene in one of the meadows of Hampstead: we see a kite, children playing, adult joining in, lovers kissing. Emily (Diane Keaton) is meeting in her building with her women friends, and being told she has an enormous upkeep bill. We watch her go off to her volunteer work at a charity shop, upstairs to her attic to rummage, find a binoculars and glimpse and keeping watching “a tramp” (Brendan Gleeson) whose lifestyle is improbably picturesque, cunningly achieved, and comfortable. At moments of high and low comedy, poignancy (she and her son, played so warmly by James Norton), the score inspirits us — light, easy, life as dance. Lots of photography of Hampstead, a pretty place where elite activities go on all the time

People fly kites; they spoil their children. Emily and Donald even take time out visit a museum (as did Harvey and Kate — see below)

Towards the end of the movie, we worry our new found couple have broken up: when he gains ownership of the property, and she has to leave her flat, she wants him to sell the his house and property, and when she sells her condom, they can start “a new life” comfortably together. He says, they have a life already; a big explosion and protesting quarrel ensues. Switch to another shot and she is, with the help of her son, selling all her stuff in an auction, paying her last bills, and settling into a another picturesque place. Time passes and she has acquired a new companion, a hen (Claude). But lo and behold Donald is passing by in a houseboat, his house moved onto a moving barge and before you know it they are drifting down the stream together

The director, Joel Hopkins, has made only four films in the relatively longer time (for making more films than that) he has been working. They are original and quirky, draw on depth of feeling and thought and improvisation. This one is actually some two years old, and has only come over to the US recently, and while it may have a movie run, like other recent films, the place to find it is Amazon Prime. The one by by Hopkins closest in outline is the movie about a day-long exquisitely moving walk of Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson: Last Chance Harvey.

Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson (Last Chance Harvey, 2000)

Like Harvey Shine and Kate Walker, Emily and Donald have had long lives and real troubles; all three sets of couples (I include Delpy and Hawke) are meditations on the troubled private lives of people, intelligently put before us. What’s different here is the troubles are more probable — money. Emily’s husband has left her badly in debt; and she is at risk of being thrown out of her apartment unless she kowtows to her great friend (played by Lesley Manville) who gets through life by obeying her stealthy real estate developer husband; and unless Emily goes to bed with a creepy predatory lawyer (Jason Watkins) obtained for her by said friend. Donald’s life seems to have been rocky in different phases and he first achieved some stability when he built his shack and determined to live as modest a life as possible (grows some of his own food). The movie does not convey how Harry Hallowes supported himself sufficiently nor tell us the true ending of the saga.

The film does mean to have a serious political topic: homelessness, paradoxical because of the perpetual photography of this elite looking area. In fact in our society elite areas contain many desperate people. Emily prompts Donald to find the man (Phil Davis) who produced built his fireplace.  And Davis has saved (!) the miraculous 17 year old document to prove that Donald has been on that property all those years; he says he helped install a fireplace and has come to court because he was once homeless and knows what this condition is like to live out. Now he keeps body and soul together as a handyman.

Our central characters are a couple coming round to be more honest with themselves and one another, more tolerant and forgiving he, more assertive she. So it’s Last Chance Harvey all over again. They have witty conversations, explore how each reacts to society at large, and to one another. So it’s Before Sunrise all over again. But I think another different note is struck, one consonant the theme of homelessness and the power of a hegemonic real estate order. We find it in how they both meet with enough kind people along the way to keep them going — James Norton conveys the warmest affection as her son: it’s he who helps her sell her stuff at an auction, helps her find another apartment and is generally there around the edges of existence, on call.

As for Diane Keaton, she is channeling as they say Annie Hall in costume especially.

Brendan Gleeson is our aging Irish man who has hard some hard knocks but holds out for his dignity. The actor has a way of standing or sitting there so stalwartly you know he will not be abused beyond a certain point. As a man, you may lean on him.

I admit this movie is flawed; it is far more than treacly;there are not enough good individual lines and too much cliche; t is a long way shy from the art film that Before Sunrise is. I would say another summer movie, one from a couple of years ago, Mr Holmes was better because its underlying melancholy and bizarre wild underlife was more genuine.

Still, we have a couple coming round to be more honest with themselves and one another, more tolerant and forgiving he, more assertive she.  What distinguishes this film is its fundamental tone of kindliness. Even toward a hen. And that’s why it is appropriate for this year. I suggest we all be kind to ourselves this hot July 4th and to one another and revel in this gently humane part fantasy story, a summer movie. Let us not ask too much of one another for just now.

Ellen