Sadly Over-hyped

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I have neither read the novel nor seen the first film adaptation, but after viewing the 2015 release of The Go Between I can understand why it was nominated for so many awards. Wonderful cinematography, exact period costumes, even how the outdoors shots were cleared of practically all remnants of modern life, put you there in 1900.Great acting by all of the cast, especially from Jack Hollington who plays young Leo.The stiffness and stuffiness of the Edwardian lifestyle for the British upper class is well presented in the film, although by 1900 cracks were beginning to appear in the veneer of this strict social structure of the haves and have-nots. The delineation of how and when the classes meet each other and interact is clearly displayed.My how times have changed in the 21st century. If the Queen's grandson may marry a mixed race American divorcee imagine what say a daughter of a mere Lord may have over her own life choices.

Pete Travis's production is visually breath-taking, with Felix Wiedemann's camera creating a prelapsarian world of turn-of-the- century Norfolk full of bright sunshine and vivid colors of green, yellow and orange. Interior scenes are shot close to large windows flooded with light and illuminating the protagonists' faces; set- pieces such as the cricket match contrast the russet wood of the pavilion and the cricket bat with the off-white garb of the bourgeois players. Leo (Jack Hollington) and Ted Burgess (Ben Batt) are photographed in medium close-up in rolling fields, making it seem as if they inhabit the natural world around them. This use of visual imagery emphasizes the apparently unchanging qualities of the late Victorian/ Edwardian world on which, quite simply, the sun never seems to set; class-differences are firmly entrenched and everyone seems outwardly happy with their lives.The visuals provide a suitable framework for a tale that puts the stability of this world into question as Ted Burgess conducts a clandestine love-affair with bourgeois Marian (Joanna Vanderham), who is at the same time engaged to her social equal Hugh Trimingham (Stephen Campbell Moore). Director Travis makes much of the social gulf between the two lovers: Marian inhabits a world of parties, croquet matches and formal meals, policed by her mother (Lesley Manville), while Ted leads a solitary life on the farm, caring for his horses and bringing in the hay in late summer. When the two milieux collide, after the cricket match has finished, the bourgeois characters are thoroughly uncomfortable. Mrs. Maudsley looks apprehensively round the room at Ted's social compatriots as they quaff their ale and sing songs, while Trimingham puts on an air of false bonhomie, even though it's clear he'd rather be somewhere else.In such a socially stratified world, it's obvious that Marian and Ted's love-affair is doomed to failure. Yet neither of them appear to understand this; they prefer to write letters to one another, using Leo as their unwitting messenger. What becomes clear from Travis's production is the extent to which the adults' behavior is governed by self-interest; neither Marian nor Ted have any real concern for Leo's feelings as they repeatedly put emotional pressure on him to carry out their wishes.Looking back on that summer fifty years later, it's hardly surprising that the adult Leo (Jim Broadbent) should view it with a jaundiced eye. It was chiefly due to Marian and Ted's machinations that Leo ended up emotionally stunted, unable to sustain a relationship to any great depth.The ending, it must be admitted, seems a little rushed, as the adult Leo encounters the aging Marian (Vanessa Redgrave), who encourages him to set aside his resentments and start to love those around him. Shot in a series of shot/reverse shot sequences, we see Leo's stern countenance gradually relaxing as he understands the truth of Marian's words. In terms of what we have previously seen, however, it seems slightly implausible that he should undergo such a rapid change of character.Nonetheless Travis's production ends satisfactorily with the younger and older Leo shown together in two-shot against a rural backdrop. At last it seems that Leo has come to terms with his past; it is no longer a "foreign country," as Hartley describes it at the beginning of the source-text.This version of THE GO-BETWEEN tells the tale in a straightforward manner with due recognition of the social class-divisions that inhibit the characters' reactions. Definitely worth watching.

I am, more often than not, left disappointed when my favourite literary classics are adapted for television or the big screen, and while this BBC production of LP Hartley's novel is not perfect, it does better than most.The drama begins with a crushed, sorrowful looking older Leo (Jim Broadbent) travelling on a train to Norfolk, the scene of his foreign past. He imagines his younger self, (Jack Hollington) who accuses him of being a "Dull Dog." The older Leo then lays the blame for him being this "creature of ashes and cinder" squarely on the shoulders of his younger self. I found it to be a clever, and moving way of beginning the story. We then travel back fifty years in time to the scorching summer of 1900 and the characters that would haunt Leo into his old age.Leo spends his holidays at the country manor of his upper-class friend Marcus. (Samuel Joslin) It is here that he meets the beautiful, but manipulative and selfish Marian, (Joanna Vanderham) who he becomes instantly besotted with. He then becomes a postman of sorts, as he delivers love letters between Marian and her bit of rough, the tenant farmer Ted Burgess. (Ben Batt)Over the course of the summer, Leo feels increasingly uncomfortable and guilty about ferrying these correspondence, which he now knows aren't just "normal letters," back and forth. The engagement of Marian to the landlord, war hero, and thoroughly decent Trimingham (Stephen Campbell Moore) increases Leo's torment even further.I found it to be well directed, beautifully shot, with picture perfect locations. The performances were excellent throughout, especially from Master Hollington as young Leo. His acting was subtle, natural, intuitive and he had a charismatic presence that you could not take your eyes off of. One to watch out for I would say.At times it felt a little rushed, especially at the end where Broadbent returns as Leo, Batt as Marian's grandson, and Vanessa Redgrave plays the part of an older Marian. That is just a small complaint though. Overall, I found it to be a very moving adaptation of my favourite LP Hartley novel

The fragile fabric of memory that engages us in the novel is entirely lost in this highly disappointing and ham-fisted adaptation, which mistakes simplification and over-dramatisation for subtle adaptation.The opening ten minutes glide artistically through the first third of the novel in a strangely muffled and demure fashion which, whilst capturing something of the surreality of Leo's past world, entirely loses the tension and careful character dynamics that the novel develops so fluidly. By the time we come to the sight of Ted's peachy buttocks disappearing into the lake, therefore, we have been handed a rather muddy and crude palette. The basics of the story are there, but we reach them strangely isolated from the charming and sympathetic naivety of Leo's perspective. We feel entirely too privileged as an audience. This is because, in skipping over the opening exchanges, the film has had to make its narrative rather too obvious. Marian and Ted never attempt to disguise the purpose of their letters, meaning that Leo's eventual discovery of their supposed secret seems empty. Leo's interactions with both, hampered as they are by stale dialogue and half-obscured by a profusion of lens-flares and abstract music, loosen his emotional attachment to the situation, and so we lose our sympathy for his innocence. Consequently, by the time of the cricket match, the action has descended into posturing, empty one-liners, and dirty looks between Hugh and Ted, whilst Joanna Vanderhamm's hilariously half-bleached eyebrows wriggle more and more desperately in an attempt to retrieve some emotional depth.I didn't reach the end - the damage had already been done.