William Nicholson, Oscar-winning screenwriter (Gladiator, Les Miserables) and sometimes-director (Firelight), adapted his semi-autobiographical stage play The Retreat from Moscow for the devastating film Hope Gap. Annette Bening is a force of nature as Grace, an emotionally tyrannical scholar married nearly three decades to the submissive, taciturn Edward (Bill Nighy), a teacher. The two live a short walk to impressive white cliffs in a seaside town in Britain, while their grown son, Jamie (Josh O'Connor), a web developer, lives a train ride away in a city. During a reluctant visit to his folks, Jamie is informed by his father that the latter is leaving Grace that very day to move in with a woman he has loved for a year. Jamie is stunned and yet not entirely surprised. Like his dad, he is reserved and incapable of holding up his end of a fulfilling relationship. Also like Edward, his vagueness as a man results from a constant retreat from Grace's demanding nature, her need for everyone, and everything to support her interpretation of reality. As the weeks pass, the rage in Grace that is barely disguised by her narcissism rushes out in semi-lyrical torrents of self-pity and guilt-trips. She insists to Jamie that the faults in a marriage she had built a smothering fortress around do not reflect her shared responsibility. Nicholson is surgically precise in constructing Grace, a wounded queen of Shakespearian proportions isolated in a fief of her own making. Benning has never been better at fleshing out a character, especially one so incapable of self-analysis. Nicholson is equally skilled in drawing Edward and Jamie, neither of whom has dared to know what he wants in life, partly because it would always be wrong in Grace's self-protective construct. There's an element of staginess in the production, particularly in crisp volleys of sometimes elliptical dialogue. At the same time, Nicholson can go a little too far the other way, visually breaking open the original play's confined space with somewhat gratuitous shots of moving cars and street atmosphere. Multiple scenes of the three leads, in different combinations, getting a little too close to the edge of those white cliffs look truly spectacular, however, and portend an array of danger and destruction. Strongly recommended. (T. Keogh)