409. Waiting For You; movie review

WAITING FOR YOU
Cert 12A
92 mins
BBFC advice: Contains moderate injury detail, infrequent strong language

I was chatting with a funeral director the other day and they were telling me of the sadness when people die and close relatives start to find things out about them.
This has become even more the case in the digital age when phones and computers are opened up posthumously.
Paul Ashton (Colin Morgan) goes in search of his father's past after the latter (Sam Cox) gives him a deathbed clue.

It is a journey which takes him back to his father's army days in Aden and a commanding officer who moved to a country home in France.
Spurred on by a postcard and a decades-old photograph, Paul decides to go incognito, inveigling himself with the local people in an attempt to discover his father's connections.
Fanny Ardant plays the late commanding officer's daughter who is now in her 60s and embittered, sneering at the student who has landed on her doorstep.
Meanwhile, there is a hint of romantic interest with Audrey Bastien, who plays a lass who works at her dad's cafe.
I was quite taken with Charles Garrad's film because it enables the audience to put itself in the place of a bereaved family member looking for answers.
It is a process which most of us will have been through but probably gave up before we pushed the quest as far as Paul.
Morgan plays Paul with a cross between passion and ill-judgment which typifies those who are putting off grief.
Meanwhile, Ardant is perfectly poised and superior as the woman who has seen enough to know she doesn't want to play ball.
Waiting For You is pleasing on the eye because it is mostly filmed in the picturesque French countryside and it has an earworm soundtrack which has left me humming Georgie Fame's Sitting In The Park for days.
Mrs W wasn't so keen but, while accepting it is not overflowing with action, I rather liked it.

Reasons to watch: Touches a nerve over reactions to bereavement
Reasons to avoid: It is a tad laboured

Laughs: None
Jumps: None
Vomit: None
Nudity: None
Overall rating: 7/10

Director quote - Charles Garrad: "There’s hope for us older people in this movie in the sense that it’s a coming of age plot for him (Paul) but it’s also a release of a much older person."

The big question - How many skeletons do our nearest and dearest have?

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