The good news: Brit actors aren’t confined to Brit films. Arthur Newman (such an uncommunicative, unenticing title) is a sedate version of the classic American road movie. A damaged pair meet by chance and work things through together on the road, until they decide they can’t just keep on keeping on forever — and that pair are Colin Firth from Hampshire and Emily Blunt from Surrey, pretending to be Yanks.
In late middle age, Avery Cross, a middle manager and failed golf pro, is stuck. His marriage is over, his son hates him, his partner doesn’t satisfy. So he fixes a new ID as “Arthur Newman”, buys himself a vintage Mercedes 350SL, and fakes his death, John Stonehouse-style, before taking off for a spot of reinvention.
On his very first night, he bumps into a girl, “Mike”, who’s faking her identity too and has problems at least as bad as his — she’s not just a suicidal kleptomaniac druggie, her identical twin is a paranoid schizophrenic, a diagnosis she expects herself any day. Neither Arthur nor Mike can bear to be who they really are, so they roam the country, temporarily assuming the identities of other couples they spot, breaking into their homes and role-playing their way into sex.
Firth does his distinguished, withdrawn act, making this loser seem more significant than anybody else in the story reckons him to be. Emily Blunt, equally improbably attractive, even in a grubby hoodie, is deceitful and dodgy but never a bad person. So the movie, directed by newcomer Dante Ariola, written by Becky Johnston, modulates into romcom, more or less: very slow, ultimately morally responsible, romcom. In its soporific fashion, it’s enjoyable, lopingly well-paced. Our home counties stars Firth, 52, and Blunt, 29, barely seem to notice the age gap either, by the way. But that’s pretending for you.
