2018 Film Review: Finding Your Feet (2017)

Directed by: Richard Loncraine
Written by: Meg Leonard, Nick Moorcroft
Starring: Imelda Staunton, Celia Imrie, Timothy Spall
IMDb Link

After her husband of thirty-five years is found out having an affair for the last five, uppity Lady Sandra (Staunton) is forced to move back in with her older, flakier sister Bif (Imrie). Here she also meets Bif's friend Charlie (Spall), and joins a group of elderly dancers at the encouragement of Bif.

The movie is just fine for the most part. All of the actors offer good performances that make their characters engaging, even when the dialogue is incredibly generic or straight out of a fantasy you tell yourself happened, such as a particularly awkward scene wherein Sandra runs in to her husband again and promptly yells at the other woman, to the applause of the pub they're in and a free drink from the bartender. Scenes like that either contain words people wish they could say rather than what they actually say, so it often leads to the actors saying things that don't sound quite right, but it's carried through by the ability of the actors to convey emotion and share chemistry with one another.

The story itself completely familiar and conveyed decently, particularly through some consistent characterisation, particularly in Sandra's case, whose personal twists and turns always come with the added context to make sense. Even when she ends up following the completely expected route, the writers have the decency to have it fit given her suggested emotional state, although it paints her husband and daughter somehow even more poorly. The only thing that feels off is the timing and pacing of certain introductions and resolutions of particular character traits in the first act; Charlie gets an unexpected and humanising dimension introduced early on, but it ends up reaching its emotional climax only a few minutes after, and some of the events happening around Sandra, such as receiving her divorce papers, seem to occur after certain character development has happened that would make her care less about them. It's not bad, it's just a little off, and ultimately innocuous.

The Short Version: Finding Your Feet is a well-cast, well-acted piece of fluff filled with cliches and stilted dialogue; it's inoffensive, if worthy of a few eye-rolls.

Rating: 5.5/10

Published February 22nd, 2018