Keswick Film Festival

Synopsis

As I write this, 'Marriage Story' has won four awards at the Gothams, usually a good guide to which films are frontrunners for the Oscars. Directed by Noah Baumbach ('The Squid and the Whale', 'Francis Ha', 'The Meyerwitz Stories') with many big stars including Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver and Laura Dern, this may be no surprise to us.

As you may have guessed from the title, this is a story about a marriage between Nora (Johannson) and Charlie (Driver), but one that is breaking up; played in flashbacks from an idyllic relationship to where Nora says "it's about to become 'a street fight', in which legality trumps love and 'genius' becomes an 'asset', the spoils of which must be divided equally" - Mark Kermode, Guardian.

Their child is at the centre of the row, especially as Nora has moved to Los Angeles from New York, and their lawyers are making it worse...

All the actors get good reviews, especially the pairing of Scarlet Johansson and Adam Driver. The end result might well bring to mind 'Kramer v Kramer' (for the divorce scenes) or even 'Annie Hall' (for the humour), but, as Mark Kermode goes on to say, "this often hilarious heartbreaker is simply Baumbach's best film to date – insightful, sympathetic and rather beautifully bewildered".

This is the first of two Netflix films we have been able to get this year, which is a talking point in its own right. See you there!