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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Mike McCahill

Love of My Life review – deathly Britpack comedy

Pass the prosecco … left to right: Hermione Norris, James Fleet, John Hannah and Anna Chancellor in Love of My Life.
Pass the prosecco … left to right: Hermione Norris, James Fleet, John Hannah and Anna Chancellor in Love of My Life. Photograph: Paragraph Pictures Inc

This creaky curio exiles Brits to Toronto to enact a necromantic tangle: architect Anna Chancellor finds her domestic complacency with ambulant cardigan James Fleet disrupted first by a terminal cancer diagnosis, then the reappearance of her roguish novelist ex John Hannah. Nudging the dial towards bad taste might have been interesting – it’s partly couched as a fight for sexual bragging rights, with Hannah claiming “first dibs on the last fuck”. Director Joan Carr-Wiggin plumps for bookclub cosiness, alas, leaving every sitcom set-up resembling farce without the energy. The actors strive to give it spark and emotional amplitude, but the script barely seems to understand how humans exist hour-by-hour, let alone in moments of mortal crisis.

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