A Promise

Alan Rickman and Rebecca Hall star in this sensible but staid English-language period drama from French director Patrice Leconte (‘Intimate Strangers’). Leconte whips us back to Germany, 1912, where Rickman is Karl, the ailing owner of a steel factory, Hall is his much younger wife, Lotte, and Richard Madden is Friedrich, a man of quiet intelligence from a modest background who is hired as Karl’s live-in assistant. As Karl weakens and romance blossoms (slowly), war rears its head on the horizon… Despite decent performances, this promising dramatic set-up leads to little of real interest.