Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that the narrative begins with what looks like a prostitute visiting a half-naked man in a sex-for-money deal -- but it's a tease; she's a secretary and he's hired her to dictate a memoir. While a teen girl is a key character, this is very much a grown-up drama, about people prominent in London society, romance across (British) social-class lines, and Anglo-specific icons of the last ten years, like the Millennium Dome. If the most your kids know about England is what they get from Harry Potter, then the subtleties will escape them. Subplots concern parents mourning for a dead boy, or the possibility of a child's murder.
Families can talk about the grief of the parents in this movie for their lost children, or the void between Gideon and Natasha. Does he deserve the cold treatment? Or is he overreacting to a typical teen's yearning for independence? Gideon's withdrawal, lack of attention, and tardiness at work are all traits that are amusingly mistaken for signs of brilliance. You might emphasize to young viewers that only in the movies is poor job performance rewarded with being declared a genius.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Charles Cassady, Jr.
It's a cliché in Hollywood movies that parents are workaholics who routinely neglect their kids, usually until some outrageous contrivance by the scriptwriters -- like dad turning into Santa Claus or mom switching bodies with her daughter -- enables them to spend some "quality time" understanding each other. GIDEON'S DAUGHTER is not a formulaic Hollywood product, but a thoughtful British drama combining real-life events and personalities of the recent past with a fictional father-daughter divide.
It's got a puzzling set-up and chronology, as a man named Sneath (Robert Lindsay) begins dictating the story of Gideon Warner (Bill Nighy) to a private secretary. It helps to already know that Sneath was a character in a previous BBC drama by writer-director Stephen Poliakoff entitled Friends and Crocodiles; if you don't have the acquaintance of late 20th-century British events, such as the building of the Millennium Dome or the election of the Tony Blair government, then a lot of the backdrop will seem confusing. As is the flashback-laden narrative, tossed back and forth between Gideon and Sneath.
Gideon is a self-made man -- even his name is a fiction -- the son of a Polish chauffeur who has built himself up into one of the biggest public-relations wizards in London. Widowed, he has a sexy lover and is surrounded by party invitations and fawning celebrities. His wealthy firm is about to land two of its biggest assignments, representing an Italian media mogul (give yourself a prize if you recognize a disguised version of the real-life Silvio Berlusconi) and planning the festivities for the New Year's Eve 1999 bash in London, with the Queen of England attending.
But Gideon is oddly distracted. He worries especially about his disturbingly detached teen daughter Natasha (Emily Blunt, from The Devil Wears Prada), who is about to graduate from the British equivalent of high school and either go to college in Scotland or roam the dangerous jungles of South America on a save-the-jaguars project. Either way, she seems to want to remove herself from him and his world. Gideon makes a connection across social boundaries with Stella (Miranda Richardson), a divorced mother of small boy who died after being hit by a truck. Free-spirited and upbeat despite her deep grief, Stella works the counter at 24-hour market and introduces Gideon to her un-posh environment of gaudy neighborhood restaurants and small church choirs (even though she's an atheist). Gideon reveals to her the family tragedy for which Natasha has apparently never forgiven him.
The irony, of course, is that a popular and in-demand professional communicator like Gideon can't get across to his only child. As the hero grows more distracted with Natasha and Stella, Gideon finds himself blanking out at work. As in the better-known comedies Being There and Office Space, the character's apathy and pointless non-sequitur remarks are mistaken by his clients as signs of brilliance and wisdom, and Gideon's plans for the millennium celebrations are put into action. Meanwhile he makes a desperate bid to reconcile with this daughter.
The narrative is a slow-simmering affair, consistently watchable thanks to the witty dialogue, sterling performances, a lush orchestral music score, and no clearly predictable path for the story to go next. Of course, when it doesn't go much of anywhere (leaving the ultimate fate of the main players to Sneath's guesswork; even he isn't sure) … there you are.
Kids who liked The Queen might appreciate this, for being set in the same time period and social milieu. For a more conventional (but enjoyable and fairly smart) American/Hollywood treatment of the responsibilities and disconnects of parenthood, see the prosaically entitled Parenthood. For a lightweight, aimed-at-kids story of a prominent father and his rebellious offspring, try the White House comedy First Daughter.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentA lovemaking session, with a buxom, topless woman seen from behind afterwards. Women in low-cut gowns at celebrations. Gideon and his daughter speak separately (she at a school assembly!) of the sexual conquests of a famed French author, and a stand-up comic tells a raunchy joke. |
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ViolenceMinor scuffling, as a bereaved father attacks people on the street. A news report on TV about a string of murders. |
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Language"Bastard" and "God damn." One especially taboo word from a stand-up comedian. |
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Social BehaviorThough Gideon Warner obsesses about the love and approval of his estranged daughter and the mistakes he's made with her, he is careless and apathetic about most of the other people in his life, except his new girlfriend Stella (an established lover he pretty much takes for granted, and she most agreeably fades away). Stella, for her part, is a quirky and pleasant divorced woman recovering from unbearable tragedy. She announces that she doesn't believe in God, never has, but attends a church choir faithfully in order to feel something. Gideon's daughter has strong environmentalist leanings, but is otherwise rather impenetrable. |
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CommercialismExcept for British tourism, maybe. There's a discernible effort to keep known products offscreen. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoSocial imbibing. |
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