Glasgow Film Festival 2015: Radiator
Radiator ranks British film venerates Barbara Broccoli and Rachel Weisz among its squad of executive producers. Though this muscle is scarcely to be seen in a quiet effort from director Tom Browne, who also shares writing duties with co-star Daniel Cerqueira. The latter plays fictional Daniel, a middle-aged bachelor bidden to return from London to rural Cumbria by Maria, his fraught mother (Gemma Jones). She’s ostensibly concerned for the well-being of ageing patriarch Leonard (Richard Johnson). Just which of her two men, husband or son, she’s truly looking out for becomes less clear as things unravel.
Johnson is certainly strong as the dying old lion to Cerqueira’s slightly wan whelp, but it’s Jones at the top of the acting triumvir. She’s both stoic and brittle in the face of her tyrannical invalid husband. She also does the best with Browne and Cerqueira’s occasionally stagey, self-conscious dialogue. Radiator is a thoughtful film, though, and not without moments of lightness and beauty. It gently probes the line between companionship and dependence.