Chichester Cinema at New Park
And When Did You Last See Your Father?
Arthur Morrison (Jim Broadbent) and his wife Kim (Juliet Stevenson) are both GPs in the same surgery, in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales. They have two children, Gillian (Claire Skinner) and her older brother Blake (Colin Firth), from whose perspective the story is told. Blake is 40, and having to face the fact that his father is terminally ill.
Opening during a summer bank holiday family trip in the late 1950s, Arthur takes to the hard shoulder to skip a long queue of traffic at a car racing event, and eight year old Blake, and the rest of the family, are crippled with embarrassment. In the present it becomes clear that Arthur still dominates his grown-up son, a dynamic to which Blake is resigned, much to the annoyance of his wife, Kathy (Gina McKee). But when he and his family confront the reality of Arthur’s cancer, Blake is forced to reconcile himself with the past, questioning the nature of the bond between them, articulately expressing the contradictions, frustrations, love and loss bound into the complex relationships which most of us have with our parents as we grow up. Based upon Blake Morrison’s best selling memoir and written for the screen by David Nichols, this is a heart rendering story beautifully realised by Anand Tucker.
UK · 2007 · Anand Tucker · 110min
