EMPIRE OF LIGHT

Olivia Colman is extraordinary as Hilary, the smiling, efficient, middle-aged manager of a beautiful, slightly fading cinema in a British seaside town in the early ‘80s, who suffers periodic outbursts of schizophrenia. When her abusive boss (Colin Firth) takes on a young West Indian usher called Stephen (Micheal Ward) – a rare Black face in this very White bit of England - he is instinctively drawn to Hilary as someone else who doesn’t quite fit in. The two begin a tentative relationship, safely cocooned by the cinema’s tightly-knit staff of amiable eccentrics, until the racist National Front invades their sleepy town, whipping up the local skinheads to march along the sea in front of the cinema. Meanwhile, Hilary’s brain has started fizzing with illness again. Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes has created a moving story of a particular time in Britain, drawing on elements of his own past.