The Escape, 2017.
Directed by Dominic Savage.
Starring Gemma Arterton, Dominic Cooper, Frances Barber and Jalil Lespert.
SYNOPSIS:
Mark and Tara have it all: the nice house, the cars, the money. But for the stay at home mum, it’s not enough. Feeling stifled and unfulfilled, she escapes for Paris in search of a new way of life.
We’re all so used to that rosily romantic vision: a couple meet and fall in love and end up happily ever after, complete with the gorgeous house and lovely kids. But what if it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? And, to make matters worse, one of them is perfectly happy while the other isn’t. There’s a constant imbalance and a lack of comprehension between them only makes matters even worse. That’s the premise behind The Escape. The unhappy half of the partnership is Tara (Gemma Arterton), stay at home wife to Mark (Dominic Cooper) and mother to the mandatory two children. They live on an estate of modern detached houses, he has a good job, they drive nice cars, have barbecues for their friends (all families as well). They’re your archetypal prosperous couple in their thirties.
Except that she’s not happy. She’s unfulfilled, frustrated and feels taken for granted. She tells him so and, because he’s not a bad guy, he tries to understand. But he struggles with her unhappiness, doesn’t really know how to cope with it and, after what is essentially a minor domestic mishap, she finally snaps, grabs a bag and her passport and disappears to Paris.
The story is very much from her perspective and it would have been all-too-easy to paint the husband as the cause of her misery. True, he seems to have a high sex drive and is initially oblivious to her lack of pleasure in bed, even when there are tears dribbling down her cheek. But he’s not a villain, he’s just out of his emotional depth and is thrown by having his traditional, ordered life being turned upside down by something he just doesn’t understand. It’s something of an unenviable role for Dominic Cooper, but he handles it with compassion and you do actually feel a certain sympathy for him, even if it is coupled with more than a little impatience. Their relationship is summed up as they come back from an evening out: on the train they look at each other and there’s simply no communication between them, not just in terms of words, but in their eyes. There’s an emptiness, they’re like two strangers with nothing to say to each other. The barriers are up.
“Too much security is very boring” an older Parisian woman tells Tara, but perhaps ‘boring’ isn’t the word. ‘Stifling’ comes closer and Gemma Arterton, with her sighs and mournful eyes, gives a thoughtful portrayal, one that makes you think you’ve probably walked past her and others like her a thousand times and never given her a second thought. It’s a film that places a great deal of emphasis on its two main actors. They share a lot of screen time but the minimum of dialogue. Much of their communication is through expressions and gestures, pauses as well, rather than what they say to each other. And that’s part of the problem. They find talking to each other hard, so both they and we have to work out what’s going on inside their heads.
Many of the scenes feel improvised, especially the ones involving the children, which gives the film a spontaneity and energy that helps vary the pace. There are times when it’s slow, taking its time, but that allows us to concentrate on what we’re seeing – not what we’re hearing – and understand some of Tara’s issues. By the time the closing scene arrives, there’s a sense that events have come full circle. But has anything changed for her? Only she and you know the answer.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Freda Cooper. Follow me on Twitter.
