Pride, Cannes Film Festival - film review

Paddy Considine, Imelda Staunton, and especially Bill Nighy do winning work in this improbable tru-life story of a group called Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners
Irresistible: (left to right) Faye Marsay (Steph), George Mackay (Joe), Ben Schnetzer (Mark), Joseph Gilgun (Mike) and Paddy Considine (Dai)
Nick Roddick27 May 2014

Loud, proud and glad to be gay (and lesbian), Pride winningly records an improbable moment of recent history which saw a group called Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners raise money for and finally be taken to the heart of a small Welsh community during the miners’ strike in 1984-5.

Theatre director Matthew Warchus (Matilda), working from a deftly pitched screenplay by Stephen Beresford, shows a real flair for wrapping character comedy, social history and repeated tugs at the heartstrings in a candy-coloured version of real-life events during that grim winter. Don’t expect many filmic follow-ups, though, since Warchus was last week named to succeed Kevin Spacey at the Old Vic next autumn.

Many of the characters portrayed in the film are based on real-life activists, but the character of timid, half-in-the-closet middle-class Joe (George Mackay) — who introduces himself with the words “The thing is, I’m from Bromley” — is invented as our guide.

The rest of the cast is an ensemble, with winning work from Paddy Considine, Imelda Staunton, and especially Bill Nighy, playing against type as an elderly local historian with a secret. Ben Schnetzer is excellent as Mark, the most committed of the activists; and Dominic West steals every scene he’s in as Jonathan, a fruity actor with some great disco moves.

At its Cannes premiere, Pride received a standing ovation, with the loudest cheers coming from a contingent of local school kids far too young to remember the events — proof that Pride can reach way beyond a niche audience.

Things drag a little in the middle reaches and there is one too many music-and-montage sequence, but the build-up to the final scene, where the Welsh miners, complete with historic banners and brass band, lead the 1985 gay pride march through London (with caption updates on the lives of the real-life participants) is irresistible, with (at Cannes) handkerchiefs very much in evidence.

Pride opens in the UK on September 12.

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