Lasse Hallström (2011)

The poster on the sides of buses says, ‘British comedy of the year … in cinemas April 20’.  This is either hype or pessimism about what the remaining eight months of 2012 have in store.  Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, based on the 2006 novel by Paul Torday, is also being promoted as a ‘feelgood’ picture.   This isn’t feelgood in the sense of elated or even stimulated.  The film aims to make you feel mildly amused, consistently unthreatened, and smugly vindicated about the motives of politicians and their aides (British ones anyway).   Judging from the laughter in the Richmond Odeon, quite a few people were more than mildly amused (especially by the anti-political jokes).   I enjoyed Ewan McGregor’s performance as the gently eccentric hero of the story.  But the film felt longer than Intolerance and, apart from McGregor, made me want to get home to suffer more of Funny Games as soon as possible.

McGregor plays Dr Fred (Alfred) Jones, a British government scientific adviser on fisheries and a keen flyfisher himself.  That enthusiasm is shared by the Yemeni Sheikh Muhammad (Amr Waked), who wants to introduce salmon fishing to the desert of his native land.  Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Emily Blunt), a consultant representing the sheikh, approaches Fred, who rejects the idea as unfeasible.  But that’s before Patricia Maxwell (Kristin Scott Thomas) latches onto it.  She’s the British prime minister’s ruthless press secretary, anxious for a story of British-Arab cooperation to counteract the relentless bad news of army deaths in Afghanistan.  Fred succumbs to pressure from Maxwell to work with Harriet on making the sheikh’s dream reality.  Harriet’s boyfriend Robert has just been posted to Afghanistan.   A working lunch between her and Fred gives a good idea of the scenarist Simon Beaufoy’s characteristic sophistication.  Harriet raises her glass of champagne and tells Fred, who doesn’t drink at lunchtime, that toasting with water is bad luck.  They clink glasses and Harriet’s phone rings – it’s a call to tell her that Robert is missing in action.  This is just one example of many of how Beaufoy works.  If Patricia Maxwell is the most shameless opportunist in Salmon Fishing, the man who puts words in her mouth runs her a close second.

The context of Middle East politics and the significance in the plot of Arab militants give the film what is best described as a surface depth.  Lasse Hallström showed more edge and dynamism behind the camera with Abba: The Movie thirty-five years ago:  here he makes every element bland.  That includes the performances but Hallström retains some skill as a director of actors and Ewan McGregor dignifies the material.  He’s convincing as a man well aware of what he’s like – almost infuriatingly self-restrained, verging on nerdiness – but unable not to be himself.   McGregor doesn’t regard Fred Jones as comical:  his playing is gently witty, his line readings are supple and sensitive.  It’s an irony that this actor, who came to prominence in Trainspotting, has become a natural choice to play innocuous fellows like Fred but he’s awfully good in the role – and he seems to go deeper than usual.   Salmon Fishing is a romantic comedy of sorts, perhaps the most chaste of recent years.  For nearly half the film, Fred and Harriet address each other as Ms Chetwode-Talbot and Dr Jones.  Perhaps because Fred’s boss in the civil service (Conleth Hill) is called Sugden, the quaint formality evokes Are You Being Served? as much as screen romances of bygone days.  As Harriet, Emily Blunt seems faintly distraite.  Anguished at the loss of her dreamboat soldier (Tom Mison) and struggling to keep interested in the Sheikh’s project, Harriet says, ‘It’s only bloody fishing after all’ (or words to that effect).  Emily Blunt sounds as if she means this line like no other.  Perhaps she feels, six years on from The Devil Wears Prada, she should be doing something more substantial in the screen world. Still, she partners McGregor well enough and, like him, she plays things straight.  The result is less funny than his performance but Blunt isn’t annoying.  She looks spectacular in a midnight blue outfit for dinner at the sheikh’s Scottish castle (sic).

It’s something of a relief that Kristin Scott Thomas isn’t meant in this film to be the fascinating major actress she never will be.  Her caricature of Patricia Maxwell – a kind of Benenden Alastair Campbell who swears like him and/or Malcolm Tucker from The Thick of It – is crude but she’s evidently enjoying herself.   The civil service and political humour, which Scott Thomas is the focus for, made me cringe and the contrasting sympathetic treatment of the sheikh is a bit patronising.   Muhammad is given to wry philosophical soundbites – he has faith in faith but understands the risks of hubris – but he’s well played by Amr Waked.  Rachael Stirling is terrible as Fred’s careerist wife:  she carries on like a new woman of the 1920’s.   I confidently expected the dreary, obvious music to be down to Alexandre Desplat but it’s Dario Marianelli this time.

26 April 2012