Keswick Film Club - Reviews - Brief Encounter

Tuesday night saw the latest in our 'classics' series. 'Brief Encounter' was voted 2nd in the BFI Top 100 films list in 1999 (behind 'The Third Man') and didn’t disappoint the Keswick audience either. The story of Celia Johnson’s Laura and Trevor Howard's Alec meeting at a railway station cafe is famous enough that I probably won’t spoil the ending if I tell you it doesn't end well. Both are married, both are unhappy but both realise that they can't just walk away from their lives, no matter how much they want to. The repressed English feelings are still incredibly moving, even if today we want to say "just go for it"! My hero was Fred, Laura's husband, who gets the last line – "Thanks for coming back to me". Indeed, a lucky man: there might have been a very different ending nowadays...