If this seems a bit televisual, maybe it’s because of Russell T Davies’s two-part drama from 2003 with the same name, all about Christopher Eccleston’s video-store worker and his struggle with divine destiny. Actually, this movie is more interesting: a mysterious and intimate fable in the guise of gritty social realism, simply and powerfully acted. It never feels burdened or self-conscious about its subject matter, and interestingly there is nothing about religion.
If there is a fault with the story, it lies in the issue of how on earth to end it. Nadine Marshall and Idris Elba play a married couple, Jacqueline and Mark, who have a young son Jerome, or JJ (Kai Francis Lewis). But their relationship is stagnant: Jacqueline has not had sex with Mark – or anyone else – for some time. Then she discovers she is pregnant. This would be a difficult subject to raise with Mark at the best of times.
Director Debbie Tucker Green plausibly imagines what might happen: intense denial and pressure-cooker levels of fear and anger rising as the bump gets bigger – and maybe even a mute need to believe in the fiction of adultery and risk hurting one’s partner, rather than confront the unthinkable supernatural truth. The pure fear that Marshall wordlessly suggests is superb.
