It’s baffling, to say the least, that the only cinema release that A LONG WAY DOWN is going to receive in Australia is at the Emirates British Film Festival.
Baffling because it boasts such a strong cast and its source material is well sourced.
Based on the acclaimed novel by Nick Hornby, A LONG WAY DOWN stars Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Aaron Paul and Imogen Poots as four strangers who happen to meet on the roof of a London building on New Year’s Eve each with the intent of committing suicide. Their plans for death in solitude are ruined so they mutually agree to call off their plans for six weeks, forming an unconventional, dysfunctional family and searching together for the reasons to keep on living.
If this quartet of actors was not enough, you have the It Girl of the moment, Rosamund Pike and Sam Neill thrown into the mix as well, personnel and personality aplenty to paper over any paucity of plot.
Brosnan plays a disgraced television talk show host, Martin Sharp, once highly praised now wholly pilloried by a fickle public, his fall from fame to shame making him the winner of the blame game, prize being plummeting from peak to pavement, bleak bereavement.
Collette’s character is mother and sole carer for a severely disabled son. She has become isolated and convinced herself that her child would be better off with her dead, although the conviction is in conflict with her naturally selfless demeanour.
Poot’s plays an impetuous spoiled rich kid, daughter of a prominent politician. She has just been dumped by her boyfriend, triggering her attempt at topping herself atop the tower.
And Paul portrays a person who has projected his future to such an extent that his present is still fettered to his past.
Martin Sharp, still salivating celebrity, leaks their story, and the tabloids dub the pact makers The Topper House Four, a gallows humour pun on the venue of a view to a kill.
Rosamund Pike’s caustically hilarious cameo as Penny, Martin’s former co-host, a falsely smiling presenter who turns out to have a ruthless agenda when she lands the scoop with the Topper House Four on her breakfast TV sofa is a highlight. It’s as if she is finally having her revenge against Pierce for the appalling Bond film, Die Another Day, that they worked on together.
A lighter shade of dark, A LONG WAY DOWN manages to find the balance of not trivialising suicide whilst not spreading the treacle too thickly. If most people attempting or contemplating the long way down as a cry for help, the comfort of the story comes from the fact that the characters are at their lowest ebb at the beginning and everything that comes after is a gradual march toward some kind of light and redemption.
The Emirates British Film Festival runs November 6 to November 26 at the Verona, Paddington and Norton Street Cinemas, Leichhardt.
For more about a long way down, visit http://www.britishfilmfestival.com.au