Watch out, spoilers!
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British, playwright and screenwriter William Nicholson, however, who has previously directed several films, decided to film his play “Retreat from Moscow”, making a film with such famous actors as Annette Bening and Bill Nighy called “Hope Gap”, 2019, which in the Russian box office was called “In captivity of hope”, although I would call it rather the Crash or the Breaking of hope. It's melodrama again.
In a small town on the coast of England lives a married couple - Grace (Annette Bening) and Edward (Bill Nighy), they are married for a long time - in a few days will be 29 years, their adult son Jamie (Josh O'Connor) lives separately in another city and especially does not abuse visits to his parents, he has his own life, Edward understands, but Grace does not really want to put up with this. Grace is such a rather domineering person, has long crushed her husband under herself, from time to time trying to “revive” small scandals of their long-dried marriage, she does not understand that he has outlived himself, considering himself in all respects impeccable and constantly slapping her husband for his silence. All these years he honestly tried to adjust to it, until in the end he realized that it is completely useless. And one day he calls his son, asks him to come to them for the weekend, and when he comes, he admits first to him, and then to his wife, that he is going to go to another woman with whom he had a close relationship about a year ago - this is the mother of one of his students, who recently also left her husband. Grace comes into terrible indignation, does not want to let him go, tells him to stay. But he, for all his non-conflict and restraint, is quite steadfast in his decision and leaves. And then Grace’s life comes a period of despair and indignation, she demands that her husband give her another chance, does not go to any agreements and concessions, while she behaves so that even if her ex-husband hesitated, then now certainly would not return. At the same time, the son is now forced to come to her weekly for support, while he does not entirely take her side, he understands the reason for his father's act, although he is very worried about both. Sometimes it seems that she is ready to cross the line and commit suicide, because her whole concept of life has failed. But she doesn’t do that and goes to work for a charity that helps others like her. And then she goes back to writing an anthology of poetry on different themes of life, which she did before all this happened, from which the computer son then makes a website on the Internet. It seems that life is beginning to enter a new path.
Films on such topics can be shot endlessly, situations of this kind in life are full. I can’t say that the film touched me much, the main character, trying to imagine herself as the only victim, did not arouse sympathy and special sympathy in me, despite the fact that I am also a woman. People in general often feed themselves with all sorts of illusions in relation to their life partners, and in relation to their family life, and in general life as such, while rarely thinking about their partners, cherishing themselves loved ones and imposing their vision on them of how to live and how to behave with their spouse. Relationships are always mutual, people sometimes forget about this, literally not seeing who is next to them. Well, if anyone is lucky enough to find the right life partner, as Edward said, he only realized it when his new woman just touched his hand. We only get a glimpse of her, and she seems to be a complicated woman too, as evidenced by her response to Grace’s rebuke of how she dared to ruin her marriage:
- How dare you ruin our marriage? Who the hell are you?
- There used to be three broken hearts, now one.
All three actors in the film play well and the film itself is, in principle, quite instructive, I would say, if someone wants to learn something, which, as my life experience shows, usually happens very rarely, everyone is smart and knows everything themselves.
Why is the play called “Retreat from Moscow”? Edward is a history teacher and in recent years he is occupied by the history of the retreat of the Napoleonic troops from Moscow and their behavior during the retreat - if someone fell on the road, his companions quickly removed his clothes and left him alive to die, they were not particularly concerned with saving the wounded, so he is interested in the question of how ethical their actions were, could they be abandoned?