Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Sasha Hadden
Starring: Maggie Blinco, Hoa Xuande, Glenn Shorrock, Belinda
Giblin, John Gregg
At some point, and sooner than you think, the lifestyle that you lead is
going to run out, and the things which you've always liked doing you won't
be able to do anymore, and the horizons of your existence which you once
took for granted as unreachably infinite are going to shrink in and close
as quickly as night falls in winter and you will be old. I am just being
honest with you because someone needs to be. After all, you're probably in
denial about the whole thing. It will start, probably, by feeling a bit
out of place when you go to a nightclub. Then you will look suddenly
ridiculous when you try on certain clothes. Increasingly, it will seem as
if there is no place for you in a world where hope and opportunity and
status is only afforded to the young and the beautiful. Don't get angry
about it! That's the worst response you could offer: a bad look. It's all
about magnanimous acceptance now, that's the aim. I mean, take a look at
belligerent Duncan (a brilliant Glenn Shorrock) in writer/director
Sasha Hadden's A Stich in Time, a washed-up bar act coughing
his way through the standards for an audience so dwindling that he's let
go by the slick bar manager - "we're just not getting the numbers
anymore." Tell me about it.
Duncan does have one constant spectator though, his partner Liebe (a
wonderful Maggie Blinco), who watches night in night out. Thanks
she gets though: Slick complains she makes the place "look like a
retirement village" and Liebe then gets it in the ear from gammony Duncan,
too, a man furious at his diminished place in the world and looking for
someone to blame. Stoic, kind and accepting of her lot, the broken Liebe
fits the bill. "I've seen better days" she happily laments when nosing
around a market stall exhibiting bespoke female fashion (the dresses here
and the ones which Liebe will go on to craft as part of her inevitable
actualisation are irl made by kittendamour.com: wow). Time turns
fortuitously, though, as this was the same market stall where Liebe once
sold her own homemade dresses way back when. The young and insanely
handsome seller Hamish (Hoa Xuande) tells her that she's a class
act, and when she does nervously try on a rather fetching frock he intones
that Liebe is not here for the dress, the "dress is here for you" (nice
one, Hamish! I'll remember that one).
As Duncan seeps further into self-pity and frustrated rage his
circumstances are contrasted by Leibe's ensuing trajectory. In barely
disguised desperation Duncan tries ringing around old bandmates,
attempting to relive the relatively glory days. Having made something of
themselves, the more salubrious ex-band mate Justin (John Gregg)
and his wife Christina (Belinda Giblin) are a marked contrast to
our central characters and Justin wants no part of Duncan's pipe dreams:
"you should have moved on," he states, not unkindly. This lights Duncan's
touch paper and he duly kicks off. Things get worse when Liebe keeps up
correspondence with old pal Christina, which too is of anathema to Duncan:
if Liebe has friends outside the relationship, where might that leave him,
after all? (Intriguingly, when they want to hit hard, characters
instinctively invoke youth as pejorative - "how old are you?", "she's
playing you like a little girl" - in bitterly ironic acknowledgement of
their station in life).
Inspired by the kindness of Hamish, the better quality of life displayed
by Christina, and Duncan's ever more toxic bitterness, Liebe leaves her
partner, and her rediscovered passion and skill for creating dresses acts
as a metaphor for self-realisation. The film is cosy, and lovely, and as
warmly predictable as most genre products are, but what
A Stitch in Time also has is a hardness which saves it from
blandly simple Sunday afternoon fare. This arrives mostly via Duncan and
his foul mouth (swearing to my ears always sounds more poetically coarse
in an Australian accent), and the inescapable nastiness of how he treats
Liebe - it isn't the outright physical abuse of the recent
Driving Madeleine, but a more drip drip diminishing daily devaluation which is scarily
convincing (I did however laugh when Duncan, completely blinded by wrath,
accuses Hamish of having an affair with Liebe - his main character complex
unable to acknowledge a gay man).
Writer/director Hadden imbues A Stitch in Time with easy
heart and makes the most of his uniformly excellent cast, but nonetheless
anchors the feelgood with realistic and uncompromised themes of aging and
perceived irrelevance. Most poignant then is the credible proposal that,
no matter what stage you are at, stuff does and will happen, such is the
very nature of existence. Outrageous fortune may be challenging, but also
rewarding, if we just have the courage to reach for the opportunities
which perhaps don't come as easily as they once did. After all, as
A Stitch in Time's emotional ending reminds us, the eventual alternative to life is a
cruel certainty...
A Stitch in Time is in UK cinemas
from November 24th.
