Watching writer-director Sam Mendes’ latest, it’s hard to shake the suspicion that he fell in love with the setting — an achingly beautiful old movie house/general nightspot in an English seaside town — and set out to make a movie around it. Because while the place looks fantastic — Roger Deakins’ camerawork has the interior’s Art Deco woodwork radiating color almost as richly as the exterior’s neon trim — the story skips from this to that with all the depth and impact of the stone that frustrated new employee Stephen (Micheal Ward, beautiful) sends skipping across the local lido during his conversation with his mentally unstable fellow worker Hilary (Olivia Colman, sympathetic). He’s frustrated because he has to deal with rising racism in late ‘70s England; she’s unstable because — well, causes are tricky when it comes to mental health, but it’s clearly the case that she’s had a bad time of it in the Men in Authority department. Just now, she’s trapped in a tawdry office-visit affair with her boss Donald (Colin First, seedy), who begs her to suck it when she just wants to wank him and get it over with. She’d much rather share a secret tryst with Stephen, and what do you know, he’s happy to play along. Is it a young man’s coming of age tale of life lived and wisdom won, or a middle-aged woman’s journey through adversity to something approaching peace? Is it about the magic of the movies and the escape they offer, or the need to cast fantasy aside and face the duller adventure offered by reality? Maybe with a little more craft and care, it could have been all of them, but as it is, skip, skip, skip. Late in the film, Hilary asks projectionist Norman (Toby Young, appealing) why he made a particular momentous decision; his mystified reply may match the viewer’s own as to what Mendes had in mind here. (2022) — Matthew Lickona
This movie is not currently in theaters.