ON CHESIL BEACH – Review

Saoirse Ronan as Florence Ponting and Billy Howle as Edward Mayhew in On Chesil Beach, a Bleeker Street release. Photo: Robert Viglasky / Bleeker Street ©

Both romantic and searing, ON CHESIL BEACH stars Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle as a couple whose marriage feels the impact that sex, and the sexual attitudes of a time period, can have on love. Based on Ian McEwan’s 2007 Booker Prize-winning novella. McEwan also wrote the screenplay for the moving, heartbreaking drama, in which Dominic Cooke makes his film directorial debut.

Saoirse Ronan plays Florence and Billy Howle plays Edward, a young English couple just married and spending their wedding night at a Dorset hotel near Chesil Beach in 1962. Both are nervous and virgins but they are in love. In 1962, Britain still has one foot in the stifling social restrictions and sexual repression of the post-war 1950s, with the changes of the ’60s just on the horizon, like the music of the upstart band, The Beatles, that Edward loves. As the couple awkwardly approach their wedding night, the film flashes back to their romance, and then flashes forward to tell the rest of the story.

The era’s toxic attitudes towards sex, particularly for young women, creates tensions between them. As Ronan plays the character, Florence is both fearful and excited, with little knowledge and rigid ideas about what little she does know. There are also hints about possible sexual abuse by her father to complicate matters further. Edward’s own inexperience and temper issues do not help matters.

The couple met in college where Edward Mayhew is a history graduate from a modest-income rural family, who attended on scholarship and plans to write history books, and Florence Ponting is a music major, a violinist from a wealth big city family, with ambitions to lead a string quartet. Florence loves classical music and Edward loves the then-new rock and roll, yet despite their very different backgrounds and different musical tastes, they seem a perfect match.

Ronan and Howle are both very good, making a convincing couple whose love warms us. The film also has fine supporting performances. The contrast between the families is part of the charm of this film. Edward’s family life is complicated, with his father Lionel Mayhew (Adrian Scarborough), the headmaster of a small rural school, struggling to care for his wife Marjorie Mayhew (Anne-Marie Duff), brain-damaged in an accident and prone to strange behavior, while raising his son and twin daughters. Lionel is warm-hearted and proud of his gifted son, but Edward occasionally struggles with anger. The family struggles financially and their modest home is chaotic, a stark contrast to the stifling restraint of Florence’s family, where her snobby, disapproving mother Violet Ponting (Emily Watson) and driven, successful businessman father Geoffrey Ponting (Samuel West) put enormous conformist pressure on Florence and her younger sister Ruth (Bebe Cave).

One cannot fault the production values of this film and its careful attention to details, historical and otherwise. In addition to the lush photography and well-chosen locations, the film features impressive make-up in scenes where Ronan and Howle play Florence and Edward in their 60s, where the actors look convincingly like how they might look at that age rather than just a few wrinkles and gray hair. Careful attention was played to Florence’s playing as the lead violinist in a string quartet.

The striking vistas of Chesil Beach heighten the drama in the scenes that take place there.  The film takes a warm romantic tone in the flashbacks of the budding romance, with touching and sweet lighter moments but that tone shifts to a more distant one for the wedding night. This couple is truly in love but things get awkward, for both them and the audience, as the pair fumble with consummating their marriage, with some shattering consequences.

ON CHESIL BEACH builds a touching but frankly-told period love story that underscores the power of social-sexual attitudes over love and how life can turn on moment to moment choices. But the film’s near-clinical awkward sex scene may cause some audience discomfort and the ending may divide audiences.

ON CHESIL BEACH opens Friday, May 25, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars