The Sea

Art historian Max Morden (Ciarán Hinds) reacts to the recent loss of his wife by revisiting the seaside stamping ground of his impressionable adolescence in this adaptation of Irish literary great John Banville's Booker-winning novel. With Banville himself contributing the screenplay, and a fine cast on board including Sinéad Cusack as the ill-fated spouse and Charlotte Rampling as a snooty boarding-house proprietress, expectations should be high. Yet this lumpy affair proves a disappointing reminder that great literature doesn't necessarily make great cinema. The present-day framing device is a major part of the problem - poor Hinds is left lumbering around a curiously deserted coastal community to pass the time between flashbacks, since it's in his teenage years and the recent past where the story's action really happens. So though the cast can't be faulted, by the time the film's trio of key threads eventually knit together, the effect is both predictable and underwhelming. Stick with the book.