Review: ‘On Chesil Beach’ floats on strong performances

A scene from the film "On Chesil Beach." A scene from the film "On Chesil Beach." Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Review: ‘On Chesil Beach’ floats on strong performances 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

When the 1962-set “On Chesil Beach” begins, with British honeymooners Edward and Florence strolling along the oceanfront talking teasingly about music — he’s into rock ’n’ roll, she loves classical — the film hints that it might be as refreshing and uplifting as a summer breeze. The presence of Saiorse Ronan as Florence, whose disarming charms helped ground “Brooklyn” and “Lady Bird,” adds heft to that initial impression.

Yet, slowly, through flashbacks of her life and that of her new husband (an impressive Billy Howle) as well as complications that happen after that pleasant walk in the sand, “On Chesil Beach” evolves into something much sadder and more haunting. It climaxes with a hurricane of hurt that is no doubt manipulative and melodramatic but still capable of knocking the wind out of the viewers’ emotional sails.

Based on Ian McEwan’s novel, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and directed by theater director Dominic Cooke making his feature-film debut, “On Chesil Beach” is PBS-tasteful in its approach, but its power rests in a restraint that makes what it builds to all the more moving.

Florence and Edward come from different worlds. Her doggedly, upper-middle-class English family, and especially mother Violet (Emily Watson), who wears her status like an Olympic gold medal, don’t particularly care for Edward, the son of a lower-middle-class headmaster (Adrian Scarborough) and an artist (Anne-Marie Duff) left brain-damaged after a tragic run-in with a train. That Florence met Edward at a gathering for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament doesn’t count as a selling point for her mom who has no problem living in a perpetual state of cold war with both Russia and her daughter.

The young couple perseveres but their differences end up running much deeper than rock’s wild-eyed wop-bop-a-loo-bop- a-lop-bom-bom versus classical’s straitlaced sturm-und-drang. Their problems and attitudes revolving around communication, intimacy, manhood and femininity — so very much of their time and class — might seem bewilderingly anachronistic to a younger generation that can’t imagine a world before Google, Oprah and self-help philosophers. But they mirror the tenor of the times.

Ronan and Howle, who also appear together in another current movie, “The Seagull,” are finely matched while the supporting cast — including Watson, Samuel West as Florence’s father, and Bebe Cave as her sister — are pitch perfect as well. The last time Ronan appeared in a movie adapted from a McEwan novel, it was “Atonement,” a 2007 film nominated for seven Oscars, including a supporting nod for the actress.

Some fans of the book, which I’ve not read, have groused that Cooke has kept the skeletal frame of the novel but removed its beating heart, replacing it with a smothering gentility, even though McEwan himself wrote the screenplay. That may be true but “On Chesil Beach” is still no carefree day at the shore.

cary.darling@chron.com