Is Anybody There?  12A

SCREENINGS

8pm Friday 3 July 2009
8pm Saturday 4 July 2009
8pm Sunday 5 July 2009

    
Michael Caine gives one of the finest performances of his career as a retired magician who reluctantly enters a family-run old-age home.  The film charts the unlikely friendship that develops between Caine’s proud, acerbic old performer and the death-obsessed young son of the home’s overwhelmed owners.  The film brings a rich humour, as well as a rigorous honesty, to its portrait of different lives colliding under one roof and tells a charming story about growing up and growing old, and the unpredictable adventures that happen along the way.

BBFC advice: Contains one use of strong language and suicide references

“The subtle joy of Peter Harness’s script is the way it resists sentiment…  The odd-couple friendship with Caine is the source of the film’s divine joke. The pickled ex-magician doesn’t believe in a magical afterlife.  The young boy who is fascinated by tricks and drunk on Clarence’s punk behaviour is desperate to believe.  The two misfits humour each other with seances in the basement while bingo sessions and ghastly sing-songs are staged in the tea room…  The rude and real joy is Caine’s performance.  The way he sinks his teeth into the role speaks touching volumes.  Clarence is a cheeky marvel; gold-hearted, and quite mad….  It’s a tragic farce.  There are moments of dramatic pudding when the anxieties and fears that Clarence and Edward share grind in opposite directions.  But the magic is in the tiny, immaculate stitches.
James Christopher, The Times

UK RELEASE 1 May 2009

DIRECTOR Peter Harness

CAST Michael Caine, David Morrissey, Bill Milner, Leslie Philips, Sylvia Syms

RUNNING TIME 95 minutes

COUNTRY UK

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