Complete A-Z list


Daphne

5/10

Stars: Emily Beecham, Geraldine James, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor

Director: Peter Mackie Burns

The title character is a 31-year-old singleton (Beecham) working in a small London café as a short-order cook. Life outside the eaterie is one long round of booze, fags, cocaine and (very) casual sex, (although there are people she won't have sex with).

But we know she's basically kind-hearted as she makes a homeless man a sandwich and phones for an ambulance when a pharmacist is knifed in his shop.

Then there's her mother (James), who's suffering from cancer and with whom she has a permanent mud-slinging relationship. Daphne has, she says, basically given up on life.

Dialogue here is fairly sparse and often unconvincing, as is the leading character as written. A scene towards the end where a pizza boy delivers to Daphne and tells her she looks like shit (she doesn't, particularly) is just ridiculous.

And Daphne herself, well as Beecham plays her, is poor company throughout: you keep hoping someone will come round the corner and run her over, but no one does. There's a problem, too, with the central casting; it may be non-PC to say it, but the talented, red-haired Beecham is way too drop-dead gorgeous for the role. In spite of her character's lifestyle, she never looks anything (hard though she tries) but the picture of health.

The Technicolor photography of London by night (by Adam Scarth), however, is spot on.

David Quinlan

UK 2016. UK Distributor: Altitude. Technicolor.
89 minutes. Not widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 1, Violence/Horror 1, Drugs 2, Swearing 3.

Review date: 24 Sep 2017