Review of Living

Is it possible for a film to be boring and enjoyable at the same time? Well, this one does a pretty good job. Bill Nighy is a bureaucrat at the London County Council in the 1950s, and he's emotionally sclerotic (with his co-workers and his son) and acts as a road block to stop anything happening - a group of women from an estate in the East End want to turn a bomb site into a children's playground, and they are routed back and forth between departments to ensure that nothing ever happens to their proposal.

Then he learns that he's going to die from cancer, and he goes very slightly off the rails, visiting an improbably bohemian Brighton, taking a young woman who is a former colleague to lunch at Fortnum's, not turning up to work, and so on. 

It's all beautifully done, though not much really happens. It's all about the feelings, and the facial expressions that are about not revealing them.

I note in passing that there's something of a geographical error in the film. The bureaucrat and his colleagues arrive by suburban commuter train into Waterloo Station, and then cross a bridge over the Thames to approach County Hall, then the HQ of the London County Council. Except that County Hall is on the same side of the river as Waterloo, so how can they be crossing the river to approach it?

Watched in the Middle Floor at Springhill, having obtained it via informal download.

There's a very good review in the London Review of Books here.