Sir Ben Kingsley stars as Darwan and Patricia Clarkson as Wendy in Broad Green Pictures upcoming release, Learning To Drive.
The 2002 New Yorker autobiographical essay that was the source of this slight but surprisingly amiable film is really worth reading. Writer Katha Pollitt crafts an elegant portrait of a woman stepping outside her comfort zone and her neighbourhood, and a wise and funny meditation on how a noted feminist,
newly dumped at 52, has always depended on men to drive her around. Importantly, it ends without telling us whether she passed the driving test.
To say that the film version, a feelgood cross-cultural comedy of manners helmed by the patchy Spanish-born director Coixet, eschews all those subtleties is not to criticise it, but rather to define it: schematic and predictable, it's the movie equivalent of a warm bath.
Clarkson, always a pleasure to watch, delivers some magic moments, but this is not a film that would ever dare to surprise.
Clarkson plays Wendy, a literary critic for a magazine, whose husband leaves her in the first reel for a much younger woman. Reluctantly, she decides to take driving lessons from Darwan (Kingsley), a devout and proper Sikh, for whom writer Sarah Kernochan has developed a complicated, slightly cluttered back story involving illegal immigrant relatives and an arranged marriage.
The script is full of meaningful lines that seem to have been bought in bulk from a memorable-quote dealer, but at least it avoids any of the noble immigrant cliches in favour of patronising everyone equally: by the time it's over, both Wendy and Darwan will have learned something new - and you'll find out whether she got her licence.
