The West Wittering Affair

It comes as no surprise that this directorial debut was conceived as a filmed improvisation workshop rather than a feature. A romantic comedy revolving around four unhappy-in-love Londoners, it has some of the virtues and many of the flaws you’d expect from such an exercise. On the plus side, the unscripted rehearsal time yields resonant, emotionally acute details and fresh, note-perfect performances: the director’s brother Danny brings a hangdog charm to the central part of Jamie, sharing the best scene with David Annen as Greg, the therapist gradually realising his angst-ridden patient has been sleeping with his girlfriend. But much of the material is underdeveloped and the structure scrappily digressive. A romantic comedy short on actual jokes, it offers a sequence of events too slight to register: you know you’re in trouble when a character’s dislike of undressed salad is of major importance. And despite the occasional fun the movie has with psychoanalysis, there’s something self-absorbed about its indulgent view of its characters’ neuroses. In the therapy-speak that punctuates the dialogue, I longed for closure.