The film & Sons, in which a patriarch summons his estranged sons to let them in on a secret, has a stellar cast: Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West (briefly), Johnny Flynn, George MacKay, Noah Jupe. It can’t possibly fail, you might reasonably think. But when I heard my companion snoring at around the midway mark, I can’t say I didn’t feel a little jealous. This is not a family you’d wish to spend any time with. If they ever ask you for Christmas, say you’re away.
It sounds juicy on paper, as you’ll see. Nighy is Andrew Dyer, a famous literary novelist who, J.D. Salinger-style, is now a recluse and hasn’t written anything for 20 years. Nighy is practically unrecognisable, having traded his usual Savile Row dapperness for unkempt, straggly hair and an equally unkempt, straggly beard which looks as if it might have yesterday’s soup in it. (I personally prefer the recognisable Nighy.) Addicted to his ‘pills’ and an alcoholic, he lives in a Georgian country pile where he boozes, rages, listens to loud jazz while curled up in his bedroom study from which he rarely strays. He lives with his housekeeper, the remarkably long-suffering Gerde (Anna Geislerova), and his youngest son, 17-year-old Andy (Jupe), who is the result of the affair that destroyed his marriage to Isabel (Staunton). That’s what we are led to believe, and what his two adult sons (by Isobel) believe, but is this the truth? More than that I can’t say.
