Paul Andrew Williams made an impressive debut in 2006 with London to Brighton, a brutally realistic crime movie that he followed with a couple of less good but still enjoyable thrillers. With Song for Marion he changes direction, pulling together into a crowd-pleasing, tear-jerking package some elements of Brassed Off, Calendar Girls, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Quartet and TV's The Choir. Shot around Tyneside and Durham, but with no particular regional feeling, it focuses on the long-married lower-middle-class couple, Marion and Arthur, both well played by Vanessa Redgrave and Terence Stamp.
She's ebullient, outgoing and terminally ill. He's gruff, laconic, alienated from their son and incapable of showing his feelings. Moreover, he refuses to join the choir of chirpy, eccentric old folk called the "OAPz", being organised by a patronising young music teacher (Gemma Arterton). Marion represents the life force (working-class division), Arthur the embodiment of British emotional repression. Everything that follows is as predictable, dreary and proverbial as the weather in Manchester.
