Andrew Haigh's 45 Years (2015)

Forty-five years is the length of time Kate (Charlotte Rampling) and Geoff (Tom Courtenay) have been married, and are due to have a celebratory dinner at the Assembly House, Norwich. Then Geoff receives a letter written in German telling him that the body of Katya, his girlfriend who died fifty years before, can now be seen in a melting glacier (global warning) when she fell down a crevasse. Now surely questions should start here: how did whoever sent the letter know Geoff's address after all this time?; how could they possibly know the body is Katya's?; etc, etc. The script is already more full of holes than a colander.

Kate doesn't know about Katya (and note the name resemblance), doesn't know that Geoff keeps a scrapbook of memories of his relationship with Katya in the loft, so has no idea that she died with her and Geoff's embryo inside her, but she sees numerous slides of her that Geoff has kept and she looks like Kate. So all this time Geoff has harboured the secret that Kate is really a substitute for Katya, has kept the same interests the young couple had? And as Geoff drenches himself increasingly into the past Kate secretly delves into it too and becomes increasingly alarmed. Instead of comforting her deranged husband she gets increasingly jealous: of a woman who died fifty year before! Is an audience still out there?

The anniversary party takes place, and Geoff gives a good speech and says he's always loved his wife, blah, blah, but is he really thinking of Kate, or Katya, when he says that? And after ninety minutes of bland, impossible to believe script I was expecting that Geoff would kill himself, just die, or at the very least confess his undying love for Katya in front of all the guests.

This truly drab film won a host of awards and nominations and it's true that the acting is excellent. But it's all for no purpose, and I certainly won't be watching any more films by Andrew Haigh.