Why see ‘Brief Encounter’? Because Sally Hawkins says so…

We invite you to Time Out’s special screening of David Lean’s simmering post-war romance ‘Brief Encounter’, introduced by one of the film’s biggest fans, ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ and ‘Submarine’ star and Golden Globe winner Sally Hawkins.

Next week, on Tuesday April 5, the British actress Sally Hawkins will introduce a special London screening of ‘Brief Encounter’ , David Lean’s swoonsome tale of forbidden love in the provinces.

Earlier this year, we asked 150 members of the British film industry – actors, writers, directors, producers and critics – to take part in a definitive poll of the 100 Best British Films. In the third of our ten-week season of celebratory screenings, we present the film which placed at number 12 on that list.

Adapted from his own one-act play ‘Still Life’ by Noël Coward, the 1945 film follows a pair of lonely married people – suburban housewife Laura (Celia Johnson) and hospital consultant Alec (Trevor Howard) – whose desperate need for understanding and companionship leads them into a friendship which can never go any further.

The film is famous as a painfully English portrait of middle-class repression, that horror of stepping out of line even at the expense of one’s own happiness. But dig a little deeper, and there’s a raging torrent of emotion flooding through ‘Brief Encounter’: in its own subtle, sympathetic, unsentimental way the film is every bit as transgressive as any of the more explicit tales of hidden romance which came after: think ‘Last Tango in Paris’, only with a trip to Boots replacing hijinks with butter.

We’re thrilled to have Sally Hawkins on hand to introduce the film : she’s part of a tradition of strong but sensitive British actresses stretching back to Celia Johnson and beyond, and her insights into the film – as a performer and as a fan – are bound to be fresh and passionate. The star of ‘Made in Dagenham’ and ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ – for which she won the Golden Globe for Best Actress – she has also appeared in ‘An Education’, ‘Submarine’ and ‘Never Let Me Go’, as well as other collaborations with Mike Leigh in ‘All or Nothing’ and ‘Vera Drake’.

So join us next Tuesday, April 5, for this unique event, and lose yourself in the finest, saddest, most stirringly beautiful romantic film ever made in these isles.