Critic Reviews

The film creates space for Hinds and Manville to give substantial, intimate, complex performances of the kind that most movies (of whatever sort) do not allow their leads, and Manville in particular is very moving.

An adaptation of a Bernard MacLaverty novel of the same name, “Midwinter Break” is a delicate film that stays in a minor key, but whose impact is profound if you can get on its level.

Polly Findlay’s adaptation of Bernard MacLaverty’s 2017 novel is a serious attempt to delve into a complex marriage, and fortunately for such heavy material it contains two winning performances from Manville (so delightful in “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris”) and Hinds (“Is This Thing On?”).

Midwinter Break is most interested in the realities of long-term relationships—with unfaced trauma and graceful forgiveness alike—more than concrete absolutes, which is what makes it a valuable meditation on the imperfection of marriage.

Without gimmicks or pomp (save a picturesque setting) and through the supreme talents of Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds, it offers up an affecting two-hander about a couple on the brink who’ve never really acknowledged said precipice. As directed with low-key confidence by Polly Findlay, the movie is both good and, in a certain way, good enough.

Midwinter Break does nothing earth-shattering (it remains wee), but the movie touchingly colors in how it might be possible for two people to know each other too well and also not well enough.

A humane work devised by serious minds.

Fortunately, Midwinter Break stars two seasoned actors who are not even close to the winter of their careers. Both bring grace and gravitas to their characters, conveying their personal crises with humanity.

Much as I had hoped to love it given its cast and source material, Midwinter Break just never took flight. Not all great books make great movies.

Hinds and Manville do a credible job of portraying a marriage that has run its course, and their best work occurs in the silences that pass between their characters, Gerry and Sheila.