Sometimes Always Never

Synopsis:  A scrabble-playing father, Alan (Bill Nighy), reconnects with his adult son, Peter (Sam Riley), when they go to identify a body which maybe that of his other son, long since missing.

Carl Hunter’s debut feature film is an appealing exercise in English whimsy and retro styling. Recalling at times 2008’s Bunny and the Bull, which had its roots in the TV series 'The Mighty Boosh' (Hunter also comes from a television background), it revels endearingly in the minor eccentricities and quiet resignations of the English manner.

Unlike Paul King’s film which played directly to the absurdist funny bone, the dominant tone of Sometimes Always Never is a wistful melancholy anchored in the painful reality of parents grieving for their missing children, fate unknown.

Not that there is much realism here in a film which is as much about visual and verbal cleverness as it is about loss and suffering. Hunter keeps a tight lid on the dramatics, the only really moving moment being a brief reconciliation scene between another grieving couple, Margaret (Jenny Agutter) and Arthur (Tim McInnerny), after she has a brief fling with ever-opportunistic Alan. For the most part the story unfolds in a kind of slightly surreal state of suspended animation.  

This spirit is embodied in Nighy’s Alan, a lean and dapper (he’s a tailor by trade) individual who maintains a slyly provocative indifference to his surroundings, hustling Arthur over a game of Scrabble (and bedding his wife) and for no apparent reason moving in with his long-suffering son and the latter’s wife, Sue (Alice Lowe), and their computer game addicted teenage son, Jack (Louis Healy). A sub-plot involving the latter’s romantic attachment to a fellow student (Ella-Grace Gregoire) provides a minor and rather underwhelming sub-plot.

The largest pleasures with Sometimes Always Never are to be had from Tim Dickel’s retro production design and Guto Humphreys’ delicious art direction both skilfully captured by Richard Stoddard’s camerawork, along with the many, if somewhat over-played, references to 1970s pop culture, including the ubiquitous Dymo Labelmaker and the English equivalent to KTel Records, Pickwick.

Self-consciously artful, Sometimes Always Never is a skilfully-crafted, entertainingly wry film that will appeal to lovers of retro style.

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