Past and present intertwine: An elderly couple returns to the hotel where they became close when they were young and flashbacks to the earlier visit reveal the origins of both their pleasures and problems. Somewhere between the past and the present, Dennis Potter attempted to find "the shape of a life, of two lives..."
UK
Finland
Finland
UK
"It's like someone tapping on the lid of your coffin, that's what it's like. That's what it is."
Cream in My Coffee is a TV film written by Dennis Potter that shifts between two time-frames to tell a story of an enduring relationship. It is steeped in nostalgia, shown through the repeating use of the song that gives the film its name; which feels like a recycling of a go-to trope for Potter. In fact, the whole movie feels like 90 minutes I have seen before. It has a dull and faded charm, written with a bitter, argumentative glee, but it is perhaps not as startling or original as intended. Solid, imaginative work from Potter, but probably not a necessity.
A near-perfect look at age, love, guilt, cruelty and many other puzzling aspects of life. Absolutely beautiful.
A note on the viewing: Viewed at the BFI Southbank, London as part of their Dennis Potter season.
Peggy Ashcroft and Lionel Jeffries are an elderly couple revisiting a seaside resort after 45 years, their younger selves played by Peter Chelsom and Shelagh McLeod. Outside the latterday drabness and the soft glow of nostalgia imparted by effective camera work, there's something about the way people stand, talk, and move between eras that gives this Dennis Potter TV drama its unique power. And those songs! The unremitting cruelty of the intervening decades might be worth it if one's reward would be eternal life within a 1930s pop standard.
You think you have this figured out during its introductory minutes, but the jarring explosion of an argument in the rosy nostalgic bygone memory reveals the whole thing as residing in the depths of misery. Potter has such a knack for marrying the discomfort of social cringe with an unbearable pathos. For the audience in the empathetically voyeuristic position, the sadness expressed here -- that of two inseparably intertwined lives spoilt from the get-go and thus perpetually wallowing -- is almost too sadistic to endure. The lopsided scales that balance the leaden emotional material with the linked frivolity of pop music are illustrative of the point. The insurmountable and inexpressible mysteries of existence always live alongside, in perfectly absurd harmony with, good ditties.
Potter’s trademark amalgamation of 30s nostalgia, non-linear storytelling, old age and alienation is in full swing here- this one is particularly successful because of Peggy Ashcroft and Lionel Jeffries. The ending is fabulous
A unflinchingly raw depiction of an aging couple reaching the end of their relationship and brimming with irritations and regrets. The flashback structure to their earlier selves visiting the same hotel serves to fully contextualise the sorry state of their marriage. Mummy is always right.
