Stella and Gerry might not have a bad marriage, but they don’t have an especially healthy one either. In the new film Midwinter Break, these two Irish empty nesters beautifully portrayed by Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds have become the embodiment of the words “alone together” in their late 60s and early 70s. She goes to church. He reads, and drinks, and passes out on the recliner. Repeat.
But one Christmas Eve, Stella decides to break the monotony: She books a trip for two to Amsterdam, departing as soon as possible. Gerry beams that it’s a fantastic idea and off they go to try to get out of their routine and maybe remember why they made this lifelong commitment in the first place.
An adaptation of a Bernard MacLaverty novel of the same name, Midwinter Break is a delicate film that stays in a minor key, but whose impact is profound if you can get on its level. Directed by theater veteran Polly Findlay making her feature debut, the film parachutes the audience into the current state of this relationship, in all its quietly contradictory beauty.
These are two people who have walked through most of their adult lives together, raising a child, living a self-imposed exile in Glasgow and now sort of watching the clock tick down on their lives. The film teases that something violent and traumatic happened many years ago in Belfast, but that they don’t talk about that, or the Troubles, at all.
We gather that nothing quite so dramatic has happened since, but you can see the distress in Stella’s face as she sits down for the nth time to remove the plastic wrap to eat some sandwiches she prepared while Gerry sleeps. It seems both then and now, they’ve opted for a change of location instead of a serious chat about things. But there’s nothing like a new location to bring all that buried discontent to the surface.
