In 1962 England, a young couple find their idyllic romance colliding with issues of sexual freedom and societal pressure, leading to an awkward and fateful wedding night.In 1962 England, a young couple find their idyllic romance colliding with issues of sexual freedom and societal pressure, leading to an awkward and fateful wedding night.In 1962 England, a young couple find their idyllic romance colliding with issues of sexual freedom and societal pressure, leading to an awkward and fateful wedding night.
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaExecutive Producer, Author, and Screenwriter Ian McEwan stated to an audience back in 2014 that he wanted Saoirse Ronan to play Florence Ponting.
- GoofsIn the tennis match between Edward and Florence's father (Geoffrey), they're either counting the games wrong or not alternating service properly. Edward begins serving at the start of the third set, so he should be serving when the game score is even. We immediately jump forward to a later game in which Geoffrey is serving. Geoffrey loses the game (for a change), and Edward announces the score as 1-4 before serving, which means he is now serving when the game score is odd.
It's also slightly off that Geoffrey starts serving the first set, and then Geoffrey begins serving the third set after 12 games. This, however, could simply be the result of Geoffrey letting Edward begin serving the third set, out-of-order and out of strict compliance with the rules, as a sop after beating him 6-0, 6-0 in the first two sets.
- Quotes
Florence Ponting: [during foreplay] Say something. No, say something stupid like you used to.
Edward Mayhew: Miss Ponting, you have a clavicle and a philtrum that all men wish to play on, and a vibrato that all men adore, but you're entirely mine, and I'm so very glad and proud.
Florence Ponting: In that case, you may kiss my vibrato.
- ConnectionsFeatures A Taste of Honey (1961)
Here I am;
Come and lick
My white neck;
Let me pull
Your soft wool;
Let me kiss
Your soft face;
Merrily, merrily we welcome in the year." William Blake, from Songs of Innocence
Set in 1962, On Chesil Beach is far from 1963 Beach Party with Frankie Avalon and other pre sexual revolution aquatic shenanigans. Chesil is a tightly-wound story of a young Brit couple, Florence (Saoirse Ronan) and Edward (Billy Howle), just married and beyond awkward on the wedding night: dangerously innocent.
It's not a comedy, for most of the film is framed by their uncertain movements as he tries to loosen her up (a major challenge) and she tries to get in the mood. Based on a novel and screenplay by the great Ian McEwan, this dramatic romance crystallizes the damaging innocence of the times and the dire need for experience.
While 21st-century easy hookup time is not ideal, the danger of being clueless about the power of sex and its mandates is palpable in this star-crossed story. Florence, an upper-middle class musician with a fledgling quartet, is both the scourge of Edward's hopes to be a successful husband and the hope for their love that tries to transcend sexuality. Mozart laces throughout to elevate Darwinian love making, reminding of the ethereal heights to which art can elevate love.
Yes, it's a beautifully melancholic romance whose future is endangered by present repressive times, a legacy those of us know well who were taught about the opposite sex by tyrannical and ignorant clericals, who had never been married and were usually virgins. So much is set on the beach with flashbacks to help us understand the demons that it is easy to see the future through the repression of the present.
Much of the movie moves through the awkward attempt at first sex, pristine by contemporary standards. Yet, that discomfort is necessary to understand the uncompromising fate of the couple and the tears that will inevitably come.
Regardless of where anyone is now, this powerful love story reminds of how deeply we are indebted to sex and how treating it casually or ignorantly inevitably leads to lives of desperation.
Although at times On Chesil beach echoes the delicacy of love in Call Me By Your Name and at others by the talk of Richard Linklater's Before series, this romance evokes the innocence of first love and the ruthlessness of experience.
Beautifully photographed by Sean Bobbitt, Chesil still owes most of its greatness to Dominic Cooke's direction, where the harshness of failed expectations is tempered by a love that transcends, but cannot denounce, sex.
"Break this heavy chain,
That does freeze my bones around!
Selfish, vain,
Eternal bane,
That free love with bondage bound." Blake, Songs of Experience
- JohnDeSando
- Jun 14, 2018
Saoirse Ronan Through the Years
Saoirse Ronan Through the Years
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Details
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $745,971
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $35,765
- May 20, 2018
- Gross worldwide
- $3,338,249
- Runtime1 hour 50 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 2.39 : 1