Film: I hated "Hampstead" and the feeling is mutual

After watching Diane Keaton and Brendan Gleeson in "Hampstead", I wanted to dunk its writer, Rob Festinger, in the prominently-featured pond—and this is hardly the first of such ridiculous rodeos for Keaton.

Remember "Something's Gotta Give" (2003), in which Keaton and Jack Nicholson bantered in her fabulous kitchen, fell for one another, then he faded but they ended up in a clutch under a bridge in Paris? Expect the same from "Hampstead".

"Something's Gotta Give" was a Divorce Fantasy: a freshly-uncoupled fiftyish woman worried about her neck is pursued by two men: the rogue who normally shops way down the age scale, and the sweet, fifteen-years-younger doctor, Keanu Reeves. Yeah, right.

Now aging along with her audience (and still in her "Annie Hall" beret and belted tweeds), Keaton stars in a Widow Fantasy, as not-very-bereft one with financial problems. She literally scopes out Donald (Brendan Gleeson), a squatter on Hampstead Heath, who happens to be a) tolerably eccentric, b) available, and c) bearishly cute.

We can't help but watch Diane Keaton, not the character, Emily Waters; the wardrobe is straight lift of her distinctive personal style, too idiosyncratic for the unformed Emily, who has lost not only a spouse, but an identity. (In one scene, Emily shows a few photos she took in college, a moment that feels forced. In real life, Keaton is a noted photographer.)

Emily's female apartment-building neighbours, or should I say coven, are in thrall to Leslie Manville, a geriatric Mean Girl. Manville is allowed precisely two notes, bitchy and fake-sweet, which is about one-twentieth of her range. The other neighbours are pathetically eager to please, incapable of independent thought, and over-coiffed. All of the male characters are competent, though also stereotypes: evil developer, pitbull lawyer, overeager activist; at least they are given a brain.

The story (based on an actual event) limps through the three-act setup-complication-resolution. The top of the third act, the broke Emily auctions a scant table of antiques, which allows her to move to a riverbank cottage dripping Olde English charm, at which point credulity disintegrated entirely and I also realized there is not one overcast, let alone rainy day in the entire saga.

Keaton, whose best tone is wry bemusement, plays Emily as initially clueless—the kind of woman who looks at her son when he says, "You need an accountant, Mum" as if he is presenting a Nobel-worthy equation—and progresses to eventually mustering a self-serving demand.

One reviewer said the film was so evidently made for the senior market that tickets should be sold with a mug of Ovaltine and a biscuit. I'd go further: there is a cynicism that says, Stick in enough posh streetscapes and cute grandchildren-aged kids and they'll watch anything. And have Keaton try on scarves, women love that shit!

Oh, sex. In case anyone in the audience might remember that, we are treated to a tentative hand-hold, and next thing, the couple is cozied in bed the morning after (from which she arises fully clothed, what is this?) Keaton gets one line describing how they are now behaving "like rabbits"— so original—but Gleeson looks like he'd as soon be plucking parsnips from his plot.

I thought of another British film, "The Mother"  (2003), written by Hanif Kureishi, who never condescends, in which a widow played by Anne Reid and a house renovator played by Daniel Craig have an affair; we see their desire and its harrowing trajectory.

Though hardly expecting anything explicit in "Hampstead", why not a few seconds to show the transition from tetchy companionship to intimacy? We can handle it.

But more than the weirdly unsexy sex, I deplore the presentation of a 70-year-old woman as so dumb she can't tell a hen from a rooster, while she is "finally finding herself". (That self is left unspecified but it seems to involve poking around sidewalk sales.) And of course a man supplies the biology lesson.

Shame on Keaton for accepting the role, in a film contemptuous of every female in it. She'd be better off sticking with those L'Oreal ads, Photoshopped to poreless perfection.