The Chain

Tracing seven interconnected house moves all scheduled for the same day, this borrows its circular storyline from La Ronde while swapping that film's continental obsession with sex for the peculiarly British ones of property and class. The strengths of this old-fashioned, rather parochial picture lie in writer Jack Rosenthal's ear for the absurd undercurrents of everyday speech, and the solid cast of character actors. But its weak links are the grand philosophical pretensions that have each household standing for one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and Mitchell's genial removal man musing benignly on the Great Chain of Being.