driving lessons

Every day God gives us is a gift. That's why we call it the present. (Jeremy Brock, Driving Lessons)

Suffering a split shift on Sunday, I used my spare 2 hours to watch Driving Lessons, a coming of age tale with Rupert Grint (Ron in Harry Potter), Julie Walters and Laura Linney. It had been that or The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and since I can quote Anchorman back to front, I thought I'd wait for a better quality Will Ferrell offering.

For anyone who has grown up in a Christian household, Driving Lessons is not easy watching. The resignedly good-natured Ben Marshall (seventeen and a half), who over the course of the movie breaks free of his doormat status, may live in very different circumstances from the average Christian teenager, but for anyone who has made a fool of themselves in a Sunday school production, or used their free Saturday afternoon to serve food to elderly people, or simply sung through classic Church dirges rather than run free and unencumbered out of the building, the film will resonate.

I'm not going to bother explaining what happens, leave that to film critics and bloggers with too much time on their hands. The small cast is, however, an intriguing mix. Apart from Ben, whose facial features range from bored to blank to bemused with the barest of disctinction, the characters appear quite derivative: Julie Walters returns to Acorn Antiques and Laura Linney is an English version of her Truman Show character. However, they are both exquisite in these roles. Walters, whose character is a retired actress with delusions of grandeur, revels in the lines and scenes when she can recite Shakespeare and Chekhov, reminding us that her movie work is a dim shadow of her acting talent. The supporting cast are well imagined and well cast, both the downtrodden vicar and the Marshall's odd houseguest bring comedy and interest to a film that would have suffered without them. The curate is smarmy excellence, with enough screen time to strike a chord but not enough to become a nuisance. However, Ben's Scottish amour is too old to make their relationship believable, a sure sign that the writer is male!

Apart from a denouement that had me cringing in the aisles, this was a film I was very glad to have caught. My only regret is that, as a daughter still willing to do any stupid thing my Mum or Dad need at church of a weekend, Driving Lessons has left me wondering if I've really grown up yet. The film takes an easy route out: a Miramax conclusion without life's little greys blurring the soft-focus black and white.

It does, however, make great use of the word "fuck". Don't be surprised if Julie Walters makes a cameo in Tarantino's next outing, this was a great audition for the part of his grandma.