★★★☆☆
AS inoffensive and tranquil as a catalogue for cottages in the Cotswolds, this unapologetically fluffy golden years rom-com centres on Emily (Diane Keaton), an American expat and widow living by herself in a fancy flat in London.
She is being pressured by those around her, from her well-meaning and very busy son Philip (James Norton) telling her to get back out there and find love again, to her overbearing neighbour Fiona (Lesley Manville) constantly badgering her to officially support the construction of a new apartment building in place of an old, abandoned hospital considered an eyesore by most of the well-off residents.
One day, while looking with binoculars at the picturesque view from her loft, she notices a gruff man living in a ramshackle and self-built hut on Hampstead Heath across from her house. He’s Donald (Brendan Gleeson), a self-reliant loner.
Needless to say the two meet and find that their initial yin and yang personas – her an amiable and trusting woman looking for that last bit of happiness to carry her into her very older years, him a crotchety lone wolf only interested in getting on with his solitary life – actually draw them together. Opposites attract and all that.
It never gets under the skin of many of the issues inherent in the story, from the nature of homelessness to what happiness truly means as you get older. You can feel the mechanics of the story churning and clunking away in the background, with a constant need to conform to what the genre at hand expects of it.
But it’s also not interested in delving too deep. That sense of comfortable, easy-going escapism is the film’s consistent strength that carries through the patchiness of the plot. It provides an entirely innocuous couple of hours.
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