We would love you to join us for this once a month opportunity for adult members of the community to come together for fun, camaraderie, learning and film.
10.30 – Exploration workshop examining the themes, context, characters, ideas and plot of the film as well as examining the acting styles and direction.
12.30 – Lunch (please bring your own), teas and coffees can be purchased
13.30 – Watching the film explored in the workshop
Longtime retired couple Stella and Gerry realise that their relationship has reached a crossroads while on holiday in Amsterdam. After so much time and so many memories, long-held promises and deeply concealed wounds threaten to come to light and force them to confront their future.
The film is based on an actual, honest-to-goodness novel, the 2017 book of the same name by Bernard MacLaverty, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Nick Payne
Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds play Stella and Gerry, who left their home city of Belfast during the height of the Troubles over forty years ago when a then-pregnant Stella underwent a violent experience to relocate in Glasgow. Some of the details can be witnessed throughout the film via gradually-expanding flashbacks. Stella is a devout churchgoer while Gerry has a fondness for the drink that he is not nearly as clever at hiding as he thinks he is.
Nevertheless, they seem perfectly content and while their interactions may lack what one might refer to as “passion,” there still seems to be a fondness and respect between them. Therefore, when Stella surprises Gerry with a Christmas gift of a short trip to Amsterdam for the two of them, it doesn’t seem particularly strange at all although she has a very particular reason for wanting to come to Amsterdam and when she finally reveals it to an incredulous Gerry, there are some hard truths that need to be faced.
Directed by Polly Findlay
With Lesley Manville, Ciarán Hinds
The Bonington
