Rebel Wilson and Charlotte Gainsbourg are a curious mismatch in The Almond and the Seahorse
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The Almond and the Seahorse sounds like a dish at the latest avant-garde Copenhagen restaurant. In fact, its combination of ingredients is even stranger: its leads are Rebel Wilson, Australian specialist in brash, broad comedy (Bridesmaids, Pitch Perfect), and France’s Charlotte Gainsbourg, who has explored the far limits of cinematic angst in her work with Lars von Trier.
Both are in gentler, not to say lukewarm, waters with this British-made drama about traumatic brain injury: the title refers to the amygdala and the hippocampus, which process emotion and memory respectively. Gainsbourg plays Toni, the partner of cellist Gwen, played by Trine Dyrholm, a fixture of Danish cinema, currently in TV’s Mary & George; Wilson plays archaeologist Sarah, married to Joe (co-director Celyn Jones). Both women’s partners suffer from amnesia, while Joe is also emotionally disinhibited.
It feels strange that all this international talent should have been brought to the UK for a film so confused and half-baked — and that co-director Tom Stern, long-term cinematographer to Clint Eastwood, should have contributed to something that has the impersonally bright look of daytime TV.
Occasional prolix explanations of brain trauma come from a doctor played by Meera Syal, who awkwardly attempts to vibe up her information-leaflet dialogue by adopting a loftily ironic tone. All the actors seem to be acting in different films; Wilson and Gainsbourg push the melodramatic intensity in their own mismatched ways, both uncertain about how to pitch the two characters’ romantic liaison — an incongruous thread barely developed.
Apart from a solid Dyrholm, the actor who seems clearest about what he’s doing is Jones himself, who collaborated with Kaite O’Reilly in adapting her play. His Joe — switching abruptly between aggression, clowning and a poignant discomfort — offers a vivid corrective to the sentimental earnestness that dominates.
★★☆☆☆
In UK cinemas from May 10
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