– By Cate Marquis –
The heartbreaking romantic drama ON CHESIL BEACH stars Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle as a young couple in the early 1960s, whose marriage feels the impact that 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 Dorsett 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.
ON CHESIL BEACH builds a touching but frankly told period love story that underscores the power of social-sexual attitudes on 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.
The couple meet in college where Edward Mayhew is a history major from a modest-income rural family attending on scholarship and Florence Ponting is a violinist majoring in music from a wealth city family. 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.
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http://www.wearemoviegeeks.com/2018/05/chesil-beach-review/
