Midwinter Break ★★1/2

Availability: Still showing in some theaters. Distributor Focus Features has announced March 10 as the date for online streaming and other availability on Amazon Prime TV, AppleTV, Fandago at Home and other sources. See JustWatch here for up-to-date streaming availability.

Two Actors in Search of a Script

The title of Director Polly Findlay’s “Midwinter Break” recalls the famous opening line of Shakespeare’s “Richard III,” “Now is the winter of our discontent.” Discontent defines the lives of Gerry and Stella, the long-married, Irish couple whose unhappiness and growing separateness is at the heart of the matter. Stella’s solution is a Christmas gift to Gerry of a trip to Amsterdam, for a reason she doesn’t share with him. There they frequent the art museums, find the city’s only Irish pubs, flop on the hotel room bed, pet 2 ponies in a dark alley and, at Stella’s insistence, visit what she remembers as a Catholic convent for religious women.

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Gerry is an aesthete and indulger. Stella is a devout ascetic.

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It’s natural to want Gerry (Ciarán Hinds) and Stella (Lesley Manville) to rediscover whatever it was they once had, but it’s not easy. Now 70-ish and retired, they seem to have nothing in common. Gerry is big, sloppy, hairy, fleshy, and overweight—an aesthete and indulger—his belly prominent in those bed-flopping scenes and in another, where he slips in the bathtub and Stella struggles to cover him up before the camera sees too much. Stella is prim and neat (her belly, too, plays a role, but not because it’s large), a devout ascetic who abjures pleasure and is satisfied with nibbling on tiny sandwiches and wrapped single candies eaten sparingly. Gerry defines himself as a “people person” and likes to have fun. An overly earnest introvert, Stella tries to join him in the fun but leaves the pub saying, “It’s good to be done with all that noise.” These physical and personality differences make it hard to see them as a successful couple, past, present, or future.

Gerry (Ciarán Hinds) and Stella (Leslie Manville) seem a little lost

—both in Amsterdam and with each other.

In an effort to get at the core of the couple’s predicament, the script strives to eliminate anything that might make life more tolerable or enjoyable. Although Stella was once a teacher, and Gerry an architect, nothing remains of their careers—no contacts, no students, no colleagues, no buildings—and Gerry is haunted by memories of his Belfast office burning in a fire set during The Troubles. A son, whose birth, also during The Troubles, has scarred Stella literally and figuratively—as over-determined a moment as one will ever see on screen—never appears, and the effort to telephone him on Christmas Day results only in their leaving a voicemail message.

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Stella and Gerry are left to their own devices, and so, unfortunately, are we.

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Like Rose Byrne’s beleaguered Linda in the recent “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” the couple is radically unattached: no friends, no community, no country (they are Northern Irish, but their traumas in Belfast forced a move to Scotland) and, in effect, no family. Stella and Gerry are left to their own devices, and so, unfortunately, are we.

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Stella’s addiction is to religion.

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Both husband and wife could be understood as addicts, self-medicating for past traumas, both keeping secrets. In an effort to maintain balance between the protagonists, Gerry is seen drinking secretly and too much, though never to the point of incapacity or harm to Stella. Stella’s addiction is to religion, stemming from a pledge made decades ago when pregnant with her son, and now, in later life, one she is compelled to fulfill.

If she grabs his hand, it would be a miracle, given the film's failure to adequately show the couple as capable of one-ness.

A secular skeptic, Gerry is unaware of the pledge—though aware of the traumatic moment that induced it—and he can be dismissive of Stella’s religiosity, mocking her conviction that the wafer “host”—the symbolic body of Christ—could survive vomit and flame, part of the 1345 legend known as “The Miracle of Amsterdam.”

“Midwinter Break” was a much-anticipated film, featuring 2 fine actors, both nominated in the past 10 years for Supporting Actor Oscars: Hinds for “Belfast” (2021), and Manville for “Phantom Thread” (2017). It’s consequently disappointing that their characters’ differences appear irreconcilable, the re-made couple seemingly out of reach, an impossibility. The reason may be the casting of them as a couple. Not only do we not want to see Gerry getting out of the bathtub naked, we’re relieved that the camera stops impending intercourse when Gerry awkwardly starts pulling his sweater over his head.

Certainly, an overly manipulative script by Nick Payne and Bernard MacLaverty (author of the “acclaimed” 2017 novel on which the script is based) dulls the story. Stella’s solution founders when she realizes her facts are wrong, and she has no plan B. In an awkward scene set in an airport lounge as they await their return flight to Glasgow, Gerry confirms he will never be able to share Stella’s view that what transpired decades ago in Belfast was a genuine miracle. The real miracle, he tells Stella, is having her alongside him in life. “I adore you,” he adds, as the film takes on the tone of a rom-com. Will she take his hand? Given the failure to adequately show the couple as capable of one-ness, that would be the miracle.

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He says: He’s a slob, she’s unlikeable. That and a heavy-handed screenplay make it hard to care about the couple.

She says: The Odd Couple, minus any chemistry.

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Date: 2026

Director: Polly Findlay

Starring: Leslie Manville, Ciarán Hinds

Countries: United Kingdom, Netherlands

Language: English

Runtime: 90 minutes

Other Awards: None