Peter Riordan has spent his whole working life as a bank clerk. Quiet and unassuming, he lives alone within the comfort of rigid routines. He gains most pleasure from his hobby of meteorology. One day he is pushed out his job with “early retirement”. With nothing else to do he decides to finally take up his brother’s offer and visit him in Benidorm, Spain. Although they haven’t seen each other for ten years, Peter believes they are still close. When he arrives in Benidorm he finds his brother missing, begins looking for him, and meets Alex, his brother’s partner in a nightclub. The two gradually develop a connection whilst unravelling the mystery, and exploring the superficial gaiety hiding the deep sadness of Benidorm itself.
Director and writer Isabel Coixet’s last major outing in Australia was the charming feature The Bookshop in 2017. It Snows in Benidorm has the same gentle humanity, yet delivers it with much more guts and panache.
Timothy Spall, a master at playing insular characters, was born to play Peter. He manages to keep Peter just this side of pathetic, thereby keeping our sympathies with him. In the hands of a lesser actor he could have become simply annoying. Alongside Spall as Alex is the wonderful Sarita Choudhury. She gives us an Alex who is more than the standard trope of sexy, strong, but vulnerable woman. Supporting cast includes Ana Torrent as housekeeper Lucia whose sexual obsession with Alex gently but insistently unfolds as a sub-story. Prolific actor Carmen Machi is a delight as the local police officer, whose father once saw Sylvia Plath in a bikini. Plath spent part of her honeymoon with Ted Hughes there, and both wrote about it. Coixet uses this leitmotif to great effect through the narrative.
And of course the main star of the film is Benidorm itself. Once a charming coastal village in the south of Spain, Benidorm is now smothered in high-rise apartments and businesses catering to mostly British tourists and ex-pats. It is to the UK what Bali is to Australia. Its sun-drench weather is notorious, but when Alex declares that it never rains in Benidorm, Peter begs to differ, explaining why it’s not entirely impossible. As Peter says of his quirky hobby
“The weather means there is always something happening. And if there isn’t, there is always hope.”
This beautiful film is a testament to that.
It Snows in Benidorm opened yesterday.
Beautiful, quirky, and thought-provoking 4.5 stars
More News
