Another Life (15)

Suffering through a dreary marriage in '20s London, Edith Thompson (Little) longs for a fairytale hero to snatch her away from life with her ditchwater-dull hubbie (Moran). Handsome sailor Freddy (Gruffudd) seems to fit the bill, but will her husband ever agree to a divorce? Or will her fantasies of deceit and murder have to take on a life of their own?

Never really deciding if it wants to be a hard-hitting drama about the way a buttoned-up society treated women or a blackly amusing story of dreams gone wrong, Another Life consequently fails as both. As director Phillip Goodhew struggles with the constraints of his true story base, his cast shuttle uncomfortably between serious thesping and seaside-postcard caricatures.

Tom Wilkinson and Imelda Staunton succeed in breathing some life into it all, but when they're not on screen the film puffs along, gasping for consistency.

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