Chameleon character actor Marsan has a long list of supporting-role credits in big films (Sherlock Holmes; Mission Impossible III) and small (X+Y), which releases here next week.
He came close to a lead role as the volcanically angry driving instructor in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky but here he is front and centre as South London borough council officer John May, whose job is to track down the relatives of lonely people who have died in his bailiwick.
May is often the only mourner at the funerals he has arranged and for which he writes speculative eulogies, based on their personal effects, for stranger clergymen to read. After 22 years, he's being made redundant.
May's attempt to deal with one unfinished case brings him into contact with Kelly Stoke (Froggatt, who plays Anna Bates in Downton Abbey).
Writer-director Pasolini, a former investment banker who produced The Full Monty, has delivered Marsan a rather overwritten character. The stillness of the title is May's affliction and although the actor delivers a precise and watchful performance, the repeated sequences that depict his arid, faintly obsessive life make the film seem longer than its 92 minutes.
