Waiting Room, The Review

"The Waiting Room" reviews

Movie

The Waiting Room

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2008-05-23 16:40:35

Provider

Review

There are few phrases designed to strike fear into the heart of any British moviegoer more than 'low-budget homegrown romantic drama'. The Waiting Room, though, while far from cutting edge, is a good deal more entertaining than any UK movie of this type in recent years.

The film opens with south Londoners Anna (Anne-Marie Duff) and George (Rupert Graves) having sex that's interrupted by a young child. Contrary to first impressions, though, the pair aren't a married couple but next-door neighbours enjoying an affair. To complicate matters further, Anna's best friend is the over-achieving Jem (Zoe Telford), whose husband is – yep – George.

Elsewhere in south London's Balham, Stephen (Ralf Little) is a nurse at a retirement home, who's devoted to the dying Helen (Phyllida Law) and the forgetful Roger (Frank Finlay), who goes to the train station every day to meet a wife who never arrives. One day, thanks to Roger, Stephen and Anna bump into each other at the station and realise that they may have met the partner of their dreams.

There is little new about that scenario, of course, but The Waiting Room is, nonetheless, perfectly pitched between comedy and drama and, happily, is free of the overwhelming air of smugness that so often blights homegrown comedies. What the image of Ralf Little urinating adds to the film, though, is anybody's guess…