IN A WORLD OF MAKE BELIEVE STELLA IS ABOUT TO DISCOVER THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRUE LOVE… AND REAL LIFE.
16-year-old student Stella Bradshaw (Georgina Cates) joins a Liverpool theater company; she falls in love with the gay director (Hugh Grant), but then the aging star actor (Alan Rickman) enters the picture. Grant and Four Weddings and a Funeral director Mike Newell reunite for something that looks like the dark side of In the Bleak Midwinter (1995). We’re supposed to identify with Cates’s character, but she’s too annoying; Grant’s sadist is much more interesting. The final surprise is a shocker, but up until then it’s slow going.
1995-Britain-Ireland. 101 min. Color. Directed by Mike Newell. Screenplay: Charles Wood. Novel: Beryl Bainbridge. Cast: Hugh Grant (Meredith Potter), Alan Rickman (P.L. O’Hara), Georgina Cates (Stella Bradshaw), Rita Tushingham, Peter Firth, Alan Cox.
