The Children Act stars Emma Thompson as Fiona Maye, a judge who must regularly decide highly controversial cases, but she reaches a crossroads in her marriage, which begins to affect her professional life. I saw the preview for this movie and read the description then immediately placed it in my queue. I don’t think that I was interested in seeing it in theaters, but even if I was, it was probably only at one theater far away with not many showtimes.
I’m a lawyer and was attracted to The Children Act because of Thompson’s sober and matter of fact delivery of her decisions. I actually would have enjoyed the entire movie because I also loved how she tried to control her measured personal life, but couldn’t quite reign in all the elements of her life. Also when did Stanley Tucci become the man to cast as the love interest of mature women? I’m not complaining, but with this movie and A Private War, Tucci has seemed to discover a second life, not only as a wonderful character actor, but as a snack in his tight t-shirts and dark rimmed glasses. I see you, Tucci, keeping it high and tight for the ladies.
The Children Act ultimately lost me because its foundation rests on Fiona’s relationship with Adam Henry, played by Dunkirk’s Fionn Whitehead, whom you may remember as the main black haired soldier in a diverse cast of black haired soldiers, but I didn’t at the time of watching it. Adam is a child then young man who is a Jehovah’s Witness who suffers from leukemia and refuses a blood transfusion on religious grounds, and Fiona must decide whether or not he should get it. From this point on, I have to spoil the movie.
Despite all the signals that The Children Act gave me, including disapproving looks from random hospital personnel who never reappear, I refused to believe that I had wandered into How Fiona Got Her Groove Back because it is work, he is a child, and he is an obnoxious know it all teenage boy, which if you’re lucky, stops in a guy’s mid to late twenties. I have seen a handful of people who could have been straight up supermodels at my job and was never tempted. Fiona finds Adam precocious, and I found him insufferable. Then he gets worst! He basically becomes a stalker, but Fiona just thinks that it is youthful enthusiasm. Um, I thought that she had good judgment. They have a deeper connection because she saves his life, and they enjoy music, but the idea that a kiss from this young man would bring her back in touch with her humanity and not make her puke all over him then deck him just had me astonished. Nothing more happens, but frankly it was plenty the first time that he approached her. What woman over a certain age would not find that behavior alarming. It is not charming. Dude, how do you know where I am at all times? I’m not one of your little friends. Doesn’t she have security?
Call me a prude or a Feminazi, but I cannot empathize with Fiona being so emotionally affected by this particular dude. I have privately cried over people who reminded me of people that I loved or an element from my past, but this guy? Nah. On some level I understand that she appreciates his youthful vigor, his blank slate and his room for potential whereas she has none of those things despite all of her accomplishments and standing, but can we not lose sight of the actual dude, who was an entitled cretin. Basically because of his effect on her life, her marriage is saved, and he conveniently dies because God knows that if he didn’t die, he would still stalk her, and then this would turn into Fatal Attraction: The British Kiss edition.
The Children Act was so disappointing because I initially thought that it nailed the hectic legal life of a woman in the legal profession. I liked that she was kind of a jerk though I secretly admonished her for being so inconsiderate to her assistant. If someone brings you food, don’t knock him over without apologizing! I liked the gradually growing cracks emerging in her social life because of her husband’s bombshell, but she lost me in the way that she responded to unwanted attention from a child as if he was a desirable rebound. It may not be pedophilia, but it is too close for my tastes, and even worst, it shows a bad taste in men. If your husband was like that when you were younger, no wonder your marriage sucks. I will give the movie credit for getting me to wish that instead of dancing on the line of being a predator, her character were pining away at being childless. As much as I hate that trope being used on professional women, if I was given a choice, I would have preferred it to a cinematic impression of Roy Moore’s alleged dating practices
The Children Act has a great cast, but just when I thought that a character was important, they evaporated into thin air. The movie’s pacing was off, and the melodramatic element undercut what initially attracted me to this movie: a calm, unemotional, flinty woman at the center of the storm. Once I realized that the goal was for her to break down, and that the creators saw her as frigid and not fully human, I was peeved. It is a soap opera with a veneer of gravity and important issues.
I need to make a rule forbidding me from watching legal dramas no matter how enticing they seem to be initially. Most critics thought that The Children Act delivered as a mature drama for adults, but I could not disagree more. I can like someone, and she can be a jerk and emotionally distant wife that needs to change, but maybe she doesn’t and maybe she does. I don’t enjoy this compulsion to take women from their pedestal of power and disguise it as character development. All she needs is a good shag is such a trite solution.