A Long Way Down UK PosterFollowing on from his delightfully whimsical comedy Heartbreaker, French director Pascal Chaumeil has now tried his hand in the English language, adapting Nick Hornby’s novel A Long Way Down. Teaming up with writer Jack Thorne – who penned the incredibly devastating This is England TV series, it’s fair to say that their contrasting styles was always going to make for quite a gamble. Regrettably, it’s not one that has paid off. Two rights, in this instance, have made one hell of a wrong.

The films opens with Pierce Brosnan’s Martin Sharp, a disgraced television personality contemplating suicide on the roof of a high-rise, London building, on a cold, bitter New Year’s Eve. His willingness to end his life stems from the fact he was caught having an affair with an underage girl, resulting in a hounding from the British press. However on the roof he bumps into lonely, single mother Maureen (Toni Collette), a renowned politician’s damaged daughter Jess (Imogen Poots), and J.J. (Aaron Paul) – who is terminally ill with cancer. It soon transpires that all four of them had exactly the same intention of jumping, though between them they forge a pact – to help each other overcome their own personal difficulties, setting themselves a deadline of Valentine’s Day to turn their lives around, before suicide can become an option once again.

Though carrying that Nick Hornby charm, remaining faithful to his affable writing style, this feels somewhat contrived, not translating to film as effectively as his previous work has – such as High Fidelity and About a Boy. The whole atmosphere and use of music feels too imitative, while the changing hands in first person narration also feels forced. Collette playing another eccentric, single mother with a suicidal wish is just a mere coincidence, mind you. A Long Way Down feels too much like a book adaptation, the dialogue is unnatural and you can almost see the exact point where chapters end, it’s all very episodic.

This feature is so unsubtle in every single way, and so much so, that it doesn’t reserve the right to be profound and poignant when it attempts to be, instead just feeling somewhat inappropriate, with the themes explored being dealt with somewhat indelicately. The overstated nature of the title and melodrama that ensues, however, can be excused, in a sense that this is a comedy following a group of individuals who have all been driven to a point of attempted suicide, so there’s an inevitability that it’s going to overtly theatrical.

The casting is spot on, and the performances are certainly commendable – however the characters are just so immensely irritating and badly written. Take Poots, for example, a fine actress who is displaying a credible level of fragility and volatility in this film, and yet her character is so bothersome and exasperating, that you want her to be pushed off the roof in the opening scene. Characters like Jess are a necessity in many films, but we need to be rooting for her well-being, hoping she will overcome her tragic depression, but that can’t truly be said for any of our protagonists, which disallows the viewer the chance to get emotionally invested in the tale. Not a single one of them are particularly endearing, which is quite a feat given their respective circumstances. It doesn’t help that you don’t believe in their desolation or melancholy either, as only Collette’s Maureen comes close to triggering an emotional response.

A Long Way Down is actually a rather dark tale, but there isn’t a shade of intensity to it at all, as Chaumeil and Thorne combined have struggled to find that balance between comedy and tragedy. It’s emotionally manipulative and yet even fails in that regard too, as we simply don’t care about any of these characters nor their situations. It’s also unbearably mawkish, in a real Richard Curtis kind of way. Which also means, in a very Richard Curtis kind of way, that there will still be a big audience for this, regardless of the quality of the piece.

[Rating:1/5]

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