“And When Did You Last See Your Father?” (2008)

“And When Did You Last See Your Father?” is based on a true life memoir by British poet and author Blake Morrison.  As the title implies it is concerned with father/son relationships.  Growing up in the 50s and 60s, Morrison had ambivalent feelings towards his pater Arthur, an extroverted doctor and ladies man who was all bluster and charm and not above the odd scam or con game.  A proud philistine, Arthur neither encouraged his boy’s literary talent nor took much evident pride in Blake’s mature success, content to lightly mock anything as impractical as writing for a living.

The casting of Colin Firth as the older Blake and Jim Broadbent as Arthur Morrison gives the David Nicholls scripted, Anand Tucker directed adaptation a huge boost.  Both actors are used in ways consistent with their established range and personas.  Firth gives perhaps his definitive sulky middle class Englishman performance as the perpetually uptight and conflicted son whereas Broadbent delivers another masterclass in British eccentricity, giving a rich, multifaceted account of a flawed but loving individual who seldom says what he means.

The film has a delicate structure to it, inter-cutting scenes that depict Arthur’s decline and death from cancer with flashbacks that illustrate crucial moments in his dealings with Blake.  An Oedipal theme develops around the boy’s growing suspicion that his father is having an affair with a family friend and the sympathy this engenders for his mother.  This jealousy and resentment is heightened when Blake becomes himself attracted to a new servant, a Scottish lass with whom Arthur is equally friendly.

The segues between past and present are exceedingly well handled, both dramatically and stylistically.  Anand manages to convey Blake’s point of view, one that evolves from that of a child to a teenager to a middle aged man, demonstrating how one set of assumptions about his father beget another to the point where antipathy hardened.  At the same time Broadbent is so strong, and Arthur’s part so well written, that the son’s perspective never completely dominates.  Even if Arthur’s motivations are purposefully left ambiguous, there is much sympathy for the rogue.

The female characters are not quite as well served by the script.  Juliet Stevenson has another of her long suffering spouse roles as Blake’s mother and Gina McKee does what she can with the part of his wife.  Stronger than both is Elaine Cassidy as Blake’s first love, but a strange scene in which he tries to seduce her after Arthur’s death feels out of place.  Perhaps the point is that Blake is more like Arthur than he cares to admit.

Without indulging in any obvious, melodrama manipulations “And When Did You Last See Your Father?” is ultimately a very moving experience.  The repression of both Blake and Arthur means that overt affection is kept to a minimum and then only conveyed through an indirect, almost codified language.  The final flashback, which masterfully combines a remembered instance of father son parting when the latter first left for university with Blake’s re-imagining of the same scene with him as an adult, might borrow its camera tracking technique from “Vertigo” but its hard won emotional underpinnings are all its own.