Dir: János Edelényi; Starring: Brian Cox, Coco König, Emilia Fox, Anna Chancellor. 15 cert, 88 mins.
Here is the latest specimen in what might be called the "you push, I’ll grumble" sub-genre of comic dramas about carers and their clients. Earlier models – which likewise centre on a softening relationship between a bad-tempered wheelchair user and their indefatigable helpmate – include this summer’s Me Before You, which brought romance into the equation, and Untouchable, France’s foreign-language Oscar entry in 2013.
The Citizen Kane of the bunch is Jacques Audiard’s glorious Rust and Bone, with Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts, and on the evidence of what’s come since, it seems unlikely to be overthrown any time soon.
János Edelényi’s The Carer brings nothing to the party apart from the kind of clenched, eyelid-twitching grin of enforced affability that quickly loses any charm it ever had. Brian Cox stars as Sir Michael Gifford, an irascible, tweed-and-cravat-swaddled Shakespearean grandee in the grip of late-stage Parkinson’s, whose punctilious daughter Sophia (Emilia Fox) hires a sprightly young Hungarian immigrant and aspiring actress to help out with his everyday needs.
Her name is Dorottya (stage actress and screen newcomer Coco König), which Sir Michael variously mispronounces, just for a laugh, as Tortilla and Burrito. She does eventually win him over, largely by quoting Shakespeare every bit as smugly and relentlessly as he does, be it while pushing his wheelchair around the picturesque grounds of his Kent estate or changing his incontinence pads on the antique sofa. (The screenplay was co-written by the late novelist and critic Gilbert Adair, presumably on the offest of off-days, and must be the most vividly fixated on its central character’s bowel movements since Borat.)
Anyway, Dorottya proves to be such a tonic that Sir Michael resolves to show up in person for a forthcoming lifetime achievement award ceremony, causing both Sophia and Milly (a wasted Anna Chancellor), Sir Michael’s housekeeper and one-time lover, to fret on the sidelines. Cox is doing curmudgeon-by-numbers here, although there’s no space for him to do anything better.
Nor is there much in the way of backup for the suggestion that Dorottya might herself be a great theatrical talent in the making: the mutual Shakespeare fixation wears thin quick (clunky Lear/Cordelia allusions don’t help), while a plot point that relies on Dorottya pulling off an impeccable English accent over the phone doesn’t work because, well, she manifestly doesn’t.
The overwhelming sense that the script must have been discovered mouldering in an attic somewhere is only reinforced by the occasional airborne establishing shots of Sir Michael’s country pile, which look like something from the opening credits of Antiques Roadshow.
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