Word: cynthia
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...much. But in fact, as the scenes are drawn out, we are drawn in. We wish for the characters' sake that the shot would end, if only for the illusion that their sadness might stop for a beat off camera. In one scene in an empty restaurant, where Cynthia talks at length with Hortense for the first time and suddenly realizes the truth, we almost feel embarrassed at being privy to Hortense's silent agony and Cynthia's suffering...
Siblings Maurice (Timothy Spall) and Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) shared a challenging childhood and adolescence but have since hardly spoken to each other: he is married and busy with a prosperous photography business; she is coping as a single mother of a chain-smoking teen, Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook). Meanwhile, Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), the child Cynthia gave up for adoption and forgot, tracks down her mother. Revelation to Maurice and to Roxanne seems imminent. Drama ensues...
...this is drama of the talkie, misanthropic kind. Cynthia nags and pleads with Roxanne about "taking care of herself" (birth control); Roxanne in turn twists up her face, obscured by cigarette smoke, to spit out replies in her patented you-stupid-old-slag tone. Maurice's wife, Monica (Phyllis Logan), directs sniper-shots of verbal abuse at Maurice when he comes home on her most physically trying day. Even his old business partner, Stuart (Ron Cook), turns up at his office for the sole purpose of berating Maurice and wistfully whining about still having "the eye" for photography...
...these pacific figures, Leigh adds shaking, saddened Cynthia -- and there lies the rub. Blethyn gives Cynthia all the delicacy and poise of a crack baby, at times almost frightening to watch. This portrayal works to a large extent and could probably stand on its own. She is, in truth, still a child who was thrust into playing the adult early on, and Blethyn's small, quavering voice further lends a perfect, little-girl feel to all her quirky little expressions ("I wouldn't know 'im if'e stood up in me soup...
...passed without comment that the local Congressman, John Kasich, the powerful chairman of the House Budget Committee, stretches his paycheck by sharing a Virginia town house for the two or three nights a week that Congress is in session. His housemate? His male chief of staff. Last month Cynthia Ruccia, Kasich's Democratic challenger, called for a Justice Department investigation of what she said was "a serious appearance of impropriety" because Kasich, who is divorced, lived with someone whose government salary he controls...