On Chesil Beach
A couple's lives change forever on their wedding day in this Ian McEwan (Atonement) adaptation starring Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird) and Billy Howle (Dunkirk).
Now on their honeymoon, Florence (Ronan) and Edward (Howle) learn about the differences between them – their attitudes, temperaments and their drastically different backgrounds. Out on the beach on their fateful wedding day, one of them makes a major decision that will utterly change both of their lives forever.
- Director:
- Dominic Cooke (feature debut)
- Writer:
- Ian McEwan
- Cast:
- Saoirse RonanBilly HowleEmily WatsonAnne-Marie DuffSamuel WestFlorence BakerAdrian ScarboroughJonjo O'Neill
Reviews & comments
Flicks, Matt Glasby
flicksTagged as a romance, but very much of the tears-before-bedtime variety, Dominic Cooke’s eager adaptation of Ian McEwan’s 2007 novella is surprising for the fact that it exists at all. Although the book, which charts the wedding night traumas of a naive young couple in pre-Swinging Sixties England, has plenty of the qualities that usually make for compelling drama, it pivots on a scene of sexual frankness rarely seen in respectable cinema.
Variety
pressIt’s a lyrical and rapturous film — a repressed passion play, funny, delicate and heartbreaking.
The Times
pressThe text is rich with stylistic flourishes and social observations, and boasts a genuinely wrenching closing sequence. The film, alas, is not.
The Guardian
pressIt is a tender and valuable film, well acted, with a shrewd eye for how naive you can be in your early 20s, how impatient, how pompous, how tragicomically un-self-aware.
Screen Daily
pressEven with author Ian McEwan adapting his own novel for the screen, this somewhat stilted picture struggles to convey the deft emotional complexity of the source material.
IndieWire
pressOffers up so many tricky tonal changes, enough that Cooke eventually gives them over to a single note: limp.
Hollywood Reporter
pressThis film of delicate emotional nuance recounts an enchanting but sad love story.
FilmInk
pressCrackerjack script, and performances from the two leads which amount to a master class in great acting.
Flicks, Matt Glasby
flicksTagged as a romance, but very much of the tears-before-bedtime variety, Dominic Cooke’s eager adaptation of Ian McEwan’s 2007 novella is surprising for the fact that it exists at all. Although the book, which charts the wedding night traumas of a naive young couple in pre-Swinging Sixties England, has plenty of the qualities that usually make for compelling drama, it pivots on a scene of sexual frankness rarely seen in respectable cinema.
Variety
pressIt’s a lyrical and rapturous film — a repressed passion play, funny, delicate and heartbreaking.
The Times
pressThe text is rich with stylistic flourishes and social observations, and boasts a genuinely wrenching closing sequence. The film, alas, is not.
The Guardian
pressIt is a tender and valuable film, well acted, with a shrewd eye for how naive you can be in your early 20s, how impatient, how pompous, how tragicomically un-self-aware.
Screen Daily
pressEven with author Ian McEwan adapting his own novel for the screen, this somewhat stilted picture struggles to convey the deft emotional complexity of the source material.
IndieWire
pressOffers up so many tricky tonal changes, enough that Cooke eventually gives them over to a single note: limp.
Hollywood Reporter
pressThis film of delicate emotional nuance recounts an enchanting but sad love story.
FilmInk
pressCrackerjack script, and performances from the two leads which amount to a master class in great acting.
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