I can see why some reviewers had trouble with this movie. It ain't one for 007 fans despite the ostensible (and frankly largely irrelevant) mystery at the centre of it.
But if you like a quirky, thoughtful slow burner then give it a whirl. Granted there's nothing original about the ageing, uptight Brit finding a new dimension to life in a hedonistic holiday resort but Timothy Spall does it so well. And the relationship between Peter and the exotic dancer is richly peculiar: Shirley Valentine this is not!
The crass decadence of Benidorm is on display but the place is also given an air of the surreal with strange dancing and singing ensembles on the beach and the delightful Moorish-inspired terracotta architecture of Alex' apartment complex.
Which turns out to be ugly with peeling paint when seen from the car park. There are quite a few jarring juxtapositions like this.
You've got a club full of Brit pensioners watching (entirely as you would expect) an Elvis impersonator do his stuff but the same audience then applauds enthusiastically but implausibly when an exotic dancer produces a string of pearls from somewhere unexpected, and is followed on stage by another exotic dancer whose act involves her buttocks and a snake.
You've got a be-vested young hunk of a doorman getting it on with a poetry-quoting cop old enough to be his Mum (a cop who initially declines to interview Peter because her junior officer's English is better than hers but who goes on to speak better English than most readers of this review).
Disconcerting. Puzzling. Intriguing.
As for the mystery, it's not important really, not compared to the strange and unlikely relationship developing between Peter and Alex, the kind of relationship Peter never expected to have and which sees him growing from a shrunken, lonely bank clerk into a wannabe lover (and which sees the beautiful, pearl-obsessed dancer slowly reveal her own loneliness and vulnerability).
But the mystery. If you've seen the movie and you still think it's a mystery then you didn't sit through the credits to get to the reveal did you? Tut tut.
But if you like a quirky, thoughtful slow burner then give it a whirl. Granted there's nothing original about the ageing, uptight Brit finding a new dimension to life in a hedonistic holiday resort but Timothy Spall does it so well. And the relationship between Peter and the exotic dancer is richly peculiar: Shirley Valentine this is not!
The crass decadence of Benidorm is on display but the place is also given an air of the surreal with strange dancing and singing ensembles on the beach and the delightful Moorish-inspired terracotta architecture of Alex' apartment complex.
Which turns out to be ugly with peeling paint when seen from the car park. There are quite a few jarring juxtapositions like this.
You've got a club full of Brit pensioners watching (entirely as you would expect) an Elvis impersonator do his stuff but the same audience then applauds enthusiastically but implausibly when an exotic dancer produces a string of pearls from somewhere unexpected, and is followed on stage by another exotic dancer whose act involves her buttocks and a snake.
You've got a be-vested young hunk of a doorman getting it on with a poetry-quoting cop old enough to be his Mum (a cop who initially declines to interview Peter because her junior officer's English is better than hers but who goes on to speak better English than most readers of this review).
Disconcerting. Puzzling. Intriguing.
As for the mystery, it's not important really, not compared to the strange and unlikely relationship developing between Peter and Alex, the kind of relationship Peter never expected to have and which sees him growing from a shrunken, lonely bank clerk into a wannabe lover (and which sees the beautiful, pearl-obsessed dancer slowly reveal her own loneliness and vulnerability).
But the mystery. If you've seen the movie and you still think it's a mystery then you didn't sit through the credits to get to the reveal did you? Tut tut.