By TODD MCCARTHY, 5/26/99 
 

A Miramax release presented in association with the Scottish Arts Council Lottery    Fund of an Enigma production in association with Hudson Film. 
Produced by David Puttnam, Steve Norris. Executive producers, Bob Weinstein, 
Harvey Weinstein,  Paul Webster. Co-producer, Nigel Goldsack. Directed by Hugh 
Hudson. 
  
Screenplay, Simon Donald, based on the book "Son of Adam" by 
Sir Denis Forman.[###] 
 

                Edward Pettigrew - Colin Firth 
                Gamma Macintosh - Rosemary Harris 
                Heloise - Irene Jacob 
                Gabriel Chenoux - Tcheky Karyo 
                Moira Pettigrew - Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio 
                Morris Macintosh - Malcolm McDowell 
                Elspeth Pettigrew - Kelly Macdonald 
                Fraser Pettigrew - Robbie Norman 
 
 

    "My Life So Far" is an innocuous childhood memoir that only mildly 
    evokes the special qualities of privileged life in between-the-wars 
    Britain. Shot two years ago and reportedly subjected to repeated 
    recutting and tinkering since then, Hugh Hudson's first film in a 
    decade emerges as an episodic, anecdotal affair of resolutely small 
    moments, insights and charms. With no compelling selling points, this 
    Miramax release world preemed in Cannes, outside the festival 
    proper, as the lead-in to the AmFar benefit. It is skedded for July 
    openings Stateside but looks to come and go quickly. 

    Based on the autobiography of British TV exec and current Royal Opera 
    House director Sir Denis Forman, pic reunites Hudson and producer 
    David Puttnam on a story set in roughly the same period as "Chariots of 
    Fire." The film is dedicated to that film's late costar, Ian Charleson. But 
    if a sense of discovery and drive energized that picture "Life" has no 
    urgency behind it at all, only a gentle nostalgia for a more innocent time 
    when eccentricity and repressed passion ruled. At Harewood House, an 
    architecturally bizarre castle in the Scottish Highlands, elderly Gamma 
    Macintosh (Rosemary Harris) sternly presides over a clan that includes 
    her daughter Moira (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), latter's oddball 
    inventor husband Edward Pettigrew (Colin Firth) and the couple's 
    children, notably the 10-year-old Fraser (Robbie Norman), through 
    whose eyes the events are seen. 

    Virtually overrun by kids and animals and seemingly immune from the 
    cares of everyday world, life at the estate is enlivened by a constant 
    stream of visitors; one day might bring a French aviator, "the Emperor 
    of the Air" (Tcheky Karyo), landing his bi-plane to impress Fraser's 
    sister Elspeth (Kelly Macdonald), and another might welcome Moira's 
    hard-driving brother Morris (Malcolm McDowell), who brings along 
    his French fiancee Heloise (Irene Jacob), a lovely, sophisticated young 
    woman who turns every head in the house. 

    An accomplished businessman, Morris scorns Edward's career 
    dilettantism, which includes experimenting with flying machine and 
    automobile prototypes and investigating the medicinal benefits of 
    sphagnum moss. The story's most potent thread is the allure Heloise has 
    for the conservative, religiously strict Edward and for Fraser, who is 
    utterly unschooled in sexual matters but becomes curious about the 
    mysteries surrounding "sins of the flesh." 

    Because of the intense feelings she summons up, Heloise provokes a 
    major rift among the adults in the family, while for Fraser she provides 
    the predictable but nonetheless plausible catalyst for the onset of 
    adulthood as well as for the transformation of his idealized view of his 
    father. 

    As Hudson was raised in circumstances not that dissimilar from those  
    enjoyed by the people onscreen, it's not surprising that a sympathetic 
    affinity seeps through the genteel material. But it's a feeling that helps 
    more in evoking a sense of time and place than in dramatizing the events 
    or deepening the characters. 

    The film does impart a nice impression of what it must have been like to 
    live far from the main currents of society and politics, where any 
    outsider is welcomed as a connection, however tangential, to the more 
    vital rest of the world. 

    Fraser's taste for jazz, and Louis Armstrong in particular, is impermissibly  
    exotic and  dangerous in the local context, and the fact that the estate is large  
    enough to comprise a little universe unto itself suggests a melancholy apartness  
    that deprives Fraser and his siblings as much as it blesses them. 

    But these small insights are the best "My Life So Far" can manage, and  
    the minor incidents that fill the film's brief running time will hardly 
    make a deep impression on modern audiences. 

    Sequences come and go without much dramatic shaping or effect, and 
    while the climactic showdown between Edward and Morris is as tart as 
    the finale, in which Edward silently acknowledges his son's new  
    maturity, is effectively discreet, pic's emotional power is decidedly 
    muted. 

    The cast comports itself respectably, although no one really gets to 
    develop a character. Firth, as the father who's a personal conformist but 
    a professional kook, takes the best shot at it, but is somewhat 
    constrained by the man's numerous unappetizing traits.McDowell adds 
    some welcome sting to the proceedings in his portrait of a man whose 
    intolerance differs from that of the others, and Norman is all right as 
    Fraser. Harris, Jacob and Mastrantonio bring what's required to the 
    principal femme roles but add little extra. 

    A strong visual style would have helped the film considerably but 
    Bernard Lutic's lensing, which seems to be fighting murky weather much 
    of the time, is largely dull. Other production values are pro. 

--------------------------- 
    Camera (color), Bernard Lutic; editor, Scott Thomas; music, Howard Blake; 
    production designer, Andy Harris; art director, John Frankish; set decorator, Gillie 
    Delap; costume designer, Emma Porteous; sound (Dolby Digital), Ken Weston, 
    Rudi Buckle; assistant director, Bill Westley; casting, Patsy Pollock.  
    Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (benefit), May 20, 1999. Running time: 93 MIN. 

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