Albatross.

You’ll know exactly what I mean when I describe watching a movie with a permanent grin plastered on your face? The latest film to inflict this condition was the British coming-of-age drama Albatross (2011) Niall Maccormicks debut feature film that’s set on the South Coast of England but filmed on the picturesque Isle of Man. His previous work has been in television including 2008’s award winning Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley.

A new lease of life for Beth.

Seventeen-year-old Emelia Conan Doyle gets a job as a cleaner at the Cliff House Hotel. The hotel is home to a author who has suffered writers block for twenty years and his dysfunctional family which includes young Posy, teenager Beth (Felicity Jones) and the long suffering and brittle Joa (Julia Ormond) wife and mother, ex-actress and now head cook and bottle washer at the hotel, to this ensemble our newly employed cleaning lady injects a renewed enthusiasm for life. The writer Jonathan (The Lives of Others (2006) Sebastian Koch) falls for Emelia while dispensing creative writing lessons in his private study. Beth strikes up a close friendship with Emelia persuading her to accompany her to Oxford University where Beth is to take part in the entrance interviews. While there and under the tutorage of Emelia, the naive Oxford hopeful learns that there is more to life than studying!

Oxford visit.

Reading some of the reviews you get the impression that the British critics were not convinced by film but I must differ. Although the narrative was a little lightweight I found it to be a very pleasurable and amusing 90 minutes greatly helped by the pitch perfect performance from Jessica Brown Finlay as the charismatic Emelia. I agree that the plot’s important, but even with the best-written screenplays the cinemagoer is not always as entertained?   

Can Emelia unblock Johathan?