Hope Gap

Bening’s maudlin, manipulative Grace won’t appeal to everyone as a nice time out at the cinema (“that’s the thing about unhappiness, after a while it stops being interesting,” as she so adroitly and ironically puts it), but you can’t deny she’s memorable.

Annette Bening gets it just right as a loving but maddening woman abandoned by her longtime husband.

A brief, sad little piece that doesn’t quite hurdle the blood-brain barrier and rattle you to the core, but it does achieve a half-sublimity, thanks to coastal settings with white cliffs that inspire both awe and thoughts of flinging oneself off, and also thanks to poetry.

If Bening’s genteel British accent sometimes feels a little wobbly, her character is by far the most vivid force in the film.

A modest, tasteful family drama ... None of this is terribly original, of course, but the leads consistently mine the complexity in Nicholson’s script.

Hope Gap may engage the mind up to a point with its pithy dialogue and resourceful players, but it offers little insight into the complexities and wages of wedlock.

Slow and stuffy, like a filmed play, but also considerably more nuanced and mature than your typical relationship drama.

Nicholson fails to give his film the specificity and emotional depth required to make it seem necessary. We’ve been here before and nothing in the film’s 100-minute length truly justifies why we’re back here again.