It's possible to be right -- and subtly to miss the point. The reviewers are right who complain that the love story sits uneasily with the sermon, and that the sermon itself is banal. But these complaints pale before the phenomenon that is Bill Nighy. Has anyone, anywhere ever given a more wrenching account of loneliness? Nighy underplays as usual: we learn more about his empty life from his subtlest and most fleeting expression than we would from pages of dialogue. That Gina means well -- but devastates Lawrence -- is her sad and, yes, selfish function in the film, which makes the title true and cuttingly ironic: as the girl in the cafe, Gina offers the hope of a connection she can't sustain. His reward? Loneliness piled upon loneliness. Ours? The chance to watch a brilliant actor give an indelible account of a disease endemic in the affluent West: disconnection and the death of hope.
Review of The Girl in the Café
The Girl in the Café
(2005 TV Movie)
With the flicker of an eyebrow...
25 April 2017
Warning: Spoilers