The Chil­dren Act

Author Ian McE­wan is a mas­ter when it comes to explor­ing the com­plex­i­ties of sex – its pres­sures, pains and con­se­quences. He has recent­ly adapt­ed two of his nov­els into screen­plays; On Chesil Beach, released ear­li­er this year, and now The Chil­dren Act. In both, McE­wan uses sex – specif­i­cal­ly sex­u­al dis­missal – as a force for change.

In the for­mer, direct­ed by Dominic Cooke, Saoirse Ronan’s priv­i­leged, intel­li­gent Flo­rence rejects mar­i­tal sex as a means of claim­ing her sex­u­al iden­ti­ty. In The Chil­dren Act, sex has been lack­ing in the lengthy mar­riage between High Court judge Fiona (Emma Thomp­son) and Jack (Stan­ley Tuc­ci) for 11 months. To Fiona, a respect­ed mem­ber of her field, this con­cern has either been ignored or unno­ticed. Jack, mean­while, deems this sit­u­a­tion rea­son­able grounds for start­ing an affair with anoth­er woman. It’s a sug­ges­tion he puts to his wife as a last resort, forc­ing her to see the fail­ings in their rela­tion­ship for the first time.

Jack leaves to pur­sue a strik­ing blonde – mean­while, Fiona picks up a high pro­file case involv­ing Adam (Fionn White­head), a 17-year-old Jehovah’s Wit­ness whose par­ents are deny­ing him a life-sav­ing blood trans­fu­sion. McE­wan works hard to ensure that his char­ac­ters are like­able and lay­ered. There’s a lev­el of self-right­eous­ness to all par­ties redo­lent of motor-mouthed film and TV scribe, Aaron Sorkin; the hus­band is lone­ly, the wife, though ema­nat­ing silky pro­fes­sion­al­ism, is qui­et­ly vulnerable.

As her mar­riage tapers off into the unknown, Fiona ditch­es her con­ven­tion­al prac­tice and goes to see Adam in hos­pi­tal, a vis­it which com­pels her to con­sid­er her deci­sion beyond the court­room. As she reach­es for the gui­tar at the end of Adam’s bed and the pair sing a duet, you find your­self grate­ful for the cast­ing of Thomp­son and White­head, who man­age to keep us invest­ed in such poten­tial­ly cringe-wor­thy moments.

Where The Chil­dren Act falls short is in the cast­ing of Tuc­ci as the large­ly absent hus­band. Such is his endear­ing screen pres­ence that it’s hard not to crave a meati­er part for him to rival Thomp­son. Instead, he plays sec­ond fid­dle, and to unre­ward­ing effect. For Thomp­son, how­ev­er, this is a fine role. The ambi­gu­i­ty teased out by Fiona’s rela­tion­ship with a much younger man leaves her room to tan­ta­lise, though pure­ly for the viewer’s plea­sure as the char­ac­ter is painful­ly con­sumed by her actions. Whether it’s a mater­nal bond that ties her to Adam, or that he views her as his entire world, Fiona is nev­er­the­less torn between lone­li­ness and decen­cy, with Thomp­son effort­less­ly pulling the strings.

Direc­tor Richard Eyre, who addressed sim­i­lar, albeit more sin­is­ter, themes in his 2006 film Notes on a Scan­dal, ush­ers us into Fiona’s world of priv­i­lege before he rocks it – only slight­ly at first, then more sharply as this strange rela­tion­ship deep­ens. Although Adam may not be the most authen­tic char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of a teenag­er (McEwan’s biggest flaw seems to be in his skewed, old­er person’s per­cep­tion of youth), White­head per­forms with an errat­ic ener­gy that man­i­fests itself as a sur­pris­ing sense of unease. Expect a shot of sus­pense, then, in a seem­ing­ly by-the-book roman­tic dra­ma, with an elec­tric lead per­for­mance from Thompson.