Geli Kitchiner

The film attempts to capture the mood, tension and characters of this outstanding book but unfortunately did not achieve any of them. Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson were excellent (as were the other actors) the settings were excellent, however, the complexities and moreover, the development of the individual characters, especially those within the tenement building and all of them vital to the plot, could not be achieved in the time frame of a film of less than 2 hrs and none were truly done justice. In my opinion an ambitious film, it may have been possible to do the book justice by producing a short series instead.