Hope Gap is a story written and directed by William Nicholson, of a couple who have just about everything a middle-class retired couple could want, apart from a happy marriage.
Starring Bill Nighy, Annette Bening and Josh O’Connor, the film is set at Hope Gap (from which the film gets its name) and in and around Seaford, East Sussex.
As The Guardian describes, the film tells the story of how “Light-stepping, terminally recessive schoolteacher Edward (Bill Nighy, dialling it down to give one of best performances in years) has fallen out of love with his perpetually critical, intellectually rigorous wife Grace (Annette Bening), who has been compiling an anthology of poetry for years. When their adult son Jamie (Josh O’Connor, exceedingly good at projecting shy vulnerability beneath a superficial cheeriness) comes for a visit, Edward reveals his plans to end the marriage and move out, forcing Jamie to act as a mediator between his muddled father and raging, wounded mother”.
Hope Gap is in cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema from today (28 August).