I feel like I've watched a French film in English. Jude Law is actually allowed to act, rather than just look pretty, and he is a man full of ambition, secrets, discontent. We follow the film through the characters - there are lots of loose ends where the audience is left to fill in the blanks of the story.
But the real revelation in this film is Carrie Coon who fights to maintain her own identity rather than morphing into a meek '80s trophy wife, and keep her own money, and ends up working for a local farm to keep it that way.
A man upturns his family's calm and privileged American life to move to a British manor and enrol his children in 'good' schools and chase the UK money boom for the old establishment, establishing a certain look of pretending to be rich. How will it all end?
There's morality and ethics too - who are your friends? What does family mean? Do the drugs work? What does it mean to be out of sync with the culture around you? What does it mean to be a good father and to provide for your family?
Fascinatingly we don't know how this will end - it doesn't end how you expect it to - there is toast and a sense of forgiveness; of being authentic.
This film makes me think of Don't Look Now - it has that same kind of slow burning, intense, Gothicky feel.
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