Latest news with #MarianneElliott
Telegraph
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The Salt Path: Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs are weighed down by their script
For most travellers, walking the 630-mile coastal path from Minehead to Poole – tracing the whole finger of the Southwest Peninsula – might be cause for a two-month hiking sabbatical. For the married couple in The Salt Path, based on a 2018 memoir by one of them, Raynor Winn, it became the solution instead to a more immediate problem: they'd lost their home. After an unwise investment in a friend's failing company, they forfeited a court case and found their farm repossessed. The health of Moth (Jason Isaacs) also declined alarmingly, and he was diagnosed with corticobasal degeneration (CBD). When he and Raynor (Gillian Anderson) decide to heave on their backpacks and set off regardless, they have hardly any cash to hand, subsisting on instant noodles, charity, and whatever else they can scrape together. This modestly scaled drama is the feature debut of the fêted West End theatre director Marianne Elliott (War Horse, Company). It makes genuinely important points about homelessness, and the middle-class horror of ever crossing that line. But the script, by Rebecca Lenkiewicz (Ida, She Said) is a surprising letdown. It strikes the ear as a Cliffs Notes version (pun intended) of Raynor and Moth's coastal trek, with too many exchanges milked for nudging significance: an argument when the couple's tent is almost washed out to sea, about whether it constitutes their new home or not, is par for the course. Humour – even of the gallows kind – is not a huge strong point, either. That said, in one genuinely funny interlude, Moth is mistaken for the well-travelled poet Simon Armitage at an ice-cream van, and the couple get invited for an excruciating moment to a spontaneous soiree at someone's home. The pin-drop silence that descends when Raynor disabuses their hosts is hilariously bleak. Isaacs, on a roll with this and The White Lotus, is never not grittily believable. Perhaps the female perspectives framing this story, from page to screen, made it inevitable that he would cede the more lingering close-ups to a luminous Anderson, who digs as deep here as she might in a Beckett play – Happy Days, perhaps, with a smattering of Godot. Raynor seems to be gazing out at her own ruin, pre-grieving her husband, and mourning past contentments, all at once. The cinematography, by French legend Hélène Louvart, straightforwardly roams these craggy headlands right alongside the Wynns. But, for all the most fascinating glints of quartz, and scars of attrition, we need only look in our leading lady's face. It turns to the sun for nourishment and balm whenever the sun is there: sunlight is free, after all.
The Guardian
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Salt Path review – Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs hike from ruin to renewal
This film gives cinema one of the most nail-biting scenes of the year so far: an edge-of-the-seat moment as Gillian Anderson puts her bank card into a cash machine. Is there enough money in the account? Everything is at stake. This impressive, intelligent drama is an adaptation of Raynor Winn's memoir about walking the South West Coast Path from Somerset to Dorset, with her husband, Moth. Unlike other hikers, the couple were not walking for pleasure – at least not to begin with. They had nowhere else to go after losing their farm. From theatre director Marianne Elliott, it stars two fancy actors – Anderson and Jason Isaacs – both giving lovely, emotional, low-key performances. In flashback we see the bailiffs banging at the door, evicting the couple, who are in their 50s, from the home in which they raised their kids, now flown the nest to university. Moth has recently been diagnosed with a rare, life-limiting degenerative brain disease; nevertheless, off they set carrying their heavy rucksacks, sleeping in a tent, living off £4o a week, sharing teabags, eating in soup kitchens. The landscape is gorgeous and there are lovely moments of kindness, like the barman in a pub who brings them a teapot of hot water to make a brew, tactfully acknowledging they can't pay for drinks. Making her feature-film debut, Elliott handles their story gently, with patience – though it might feel a bit slow for some. Somehow, they all bring a real sense of meaning and truth to cheap-sounding messages about living in the moment, and the possibility of long-term relationships deepening and growing in ways impossible to predict. And the best thing about watching the couple's hardship is knowing there is a happy end coming – with the publication of Winn's bestselling memoir. The Salt Path is in UK and Irish cinemas from 30 May.
Irish Times
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The Salt Path review: Jason Isaacs and Gillian Anderson go on a very English journey of self-discovery
The Salt Path Director : Marianne Elliott Cert : 12A Starring : Jason Isaacs, Gillian Anderson, James Lance, Hermione Norris Running Time : 1 hr 55 mins Inspirational memoirs of trauma overcome have long been attractive to film-makers. Saoirse Ronan, as producer and star, recently brought Amy Liptrot's The Outrun, an addiction story, to the big screen with some success. Kristen Stewart, making her directorial debut, just premiered a take on Lidia Yuknavitch's The Chronology of Water, involving multiple personal ordeals, at Un Certain Regard in Cannes. Now Marianne Elliott, a respected theatre director, propels Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs across the English west country in an attractive, if insufficiently varied, translation of a popular 2018 book by Raynor Winn. It matters that such films are drawn from real life. Nobody would construct a fictional narrative with so few dramatic swerves from a pleasant, plodding course. Indeed, most of the greatest sadnesses have here occurred before the core narrative begins. Winn and her husband, Moth, stumbled into a wall of trouble deep into middle age. A substantial investment went badly wrong and, sued by the friend who had drawn them into the scheme, they found themselves homeless and close to broke. At around the same time, Moth was diagnosed with a rare neurodegenerative disease called corticobasal degeneration. The film is not wholly successful in explaining why their next move was to walk all 1,000km of the South West Coastal Path. True, the tented life is one way of putting a roof over unhoused heads, but there are surely solutions that involve a deal fewer blisters. Then again, this is just the sort of thing the protagonists of inspirational memoirs do. Think of Reece Witherspoon in Wild (on the Pacific Crest Trail) or Mia Wasikowska in Tracks (crossing half of Australia). We need someone else to gain wisdom through walking so that we don't have to. Just accept it. The adventures here are less deadly and dramatic than those other films. There are no killer spiders or rampaging bears in Devon. We didn't see Reece or Mia stopping for a cream tea on their opening legs. The audience can feel Moth's (literal) pain, but The Salt Path is always at home to a school of gentle English humour. Early on, another hiker puzzlingly refers to our hero as 'Simon'. Later, a party of well-heeled passersby take to the couple with baffling enthusiasm, invite them home for drinks and make puzzling mention of poetry. It transpires that Simon Armitage, the UK's poet laureate, who bears faint resemblance to Moth, has attracted press attention for his own tramp along the path. Our heroes abandon the luxurious interlude with a hearty laugh. READ MORE Such a project stands or falls on casting, and the film-makers have done well in picking Anderson and Isaacs for their leads. The former has always been at her best when inveigling a strain of steel into her character (or iron in the case of her Margaret Thatcher, from The Crown). Isaacs is a master of gruff no-nonsense, and he needs plenty of that as he struggles with fading limbs on the trek across sun- and rain-blasted lands. Hermione Norris provides strong support as a friend who, in flashback, offers highly qualified support following their financial meltdown. This is a very English class of self-discovery. Nobody spouts sentimental psychobabble or motivational gobbledegook. There is a sense that Raynor and Moth are here to do a job and that, despite occasional slips into mutual recrimination, they will do it if it kills them (which, in his case, it might). One does yearn for a little more narrative juice. Hélène Louvart's cinematography is lovely. Rebecca Lenkiewicz's adaptation provides some salty dialogue. But The Salt Path is as committed to travelling unyieldingly in one direction as are its compelling characters. There are worse things. In cinemas from Friday, May 30th
Daily Mail
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Gillian Anderson stuns in an elegant blue midi dress as she joins dapper co-star Jason Isaacs at the UK screening of The Salt Path
Gillian Anderson was a vision of elegance as she joined co-star Jason Isaacs at the UK special screening of their film The Salt Path, held at The Curzon Soho in London on Thursday. The actress, 56, stunned in a striking multi-toned blue midi dress that accentuated her incredible figure. She paired the chic look with classic nude heels and pulled her golden tresses up into a chic updo. Meanwhile Jason, 61, looked dapper by her side in a textured navy suit layered over a deep blue shirt, finishing the ensemble with polished black suede shoes. The duo radiated charm as they posed for snaps on the red carpet at the London venue. They were joined at the event by fellow cast member Marianne Elliott, as well as producers Elizabeth Karlsen and Stephen Woolley. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the Daily Mail's showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. The film's real-life inspirations, Raynor and Moth Winn, also made a special appearance at the screening. The evening marked a celebratory moment for the cast and crew as they introduced the adaptation to a London audience. The novel, with the same title, was published in 2018 and soon skyrocketed to the top of the bestseller lists and sold more than 1.5 million copies. It would go on to be shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards and the Wainwright Prize, and won the inaugural RSL Christopher Bland Prize. As for the film, it sees Gillian playing Raynor opposite Jason as her husband Moth, in the real-life story of the couple who became homeless after a business deal with a friend went wrong. After Moth was then diagnosed with a rare and incurable degenerative brain disease, the couple decided to make a 630-mile trek along the Cornish, Devon and Dorset coastline armed with only a tent and limited supplies. In response to one scene in the film that sees Gillian and Isaac's characters get intimate inside their small tent, The Sunday Times probed the X-Files star on whether she would recommend the location for an amorous encounter. A grinning Gillian affirmed: 'Well, sex in the back of a car, sex anywhere, I mean, yeah, why not? Uncomfortable, tight quarters, but needs must.' The Scoop actress also admitted that she doesn't feel any shame in discussing sex and even released a book about women's sexual fantasies in September. She explained that it was through doing Sex Education, filming scenes speaking openly about topics like sexual pleasure, genitalia and sexual orientation, that she first realised how comfortable she felt and how vital the conversations were. She said: 'In playing Jean, having [sex] become a regular topic, I realised that I didn't have shame around it. 'Also, I suddenly realised the degree to which there still was so much shame around it and the degree to which the show helped many demographics blast through some of that.' Gillian lamented that having frank conversations about sex, was still regarded as taboo and shameful, with even couples struggling to be open with each other about their desires. She said: 'In 2025 some of us seem to struggle to have that conversation with our partners. The conversation about "I prefer it like this" or "Can we take ten more minutes so I can actually get more pleasure out of this exchange?". 'Some of it is the fear that the partner might feel judged that they're doing something wrong, when actually that's not what you're saying.' The Salt Path is scheduled to be released in the UK by Black Bear UK on May 30, 2025.
NZ Herald
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs shines in stirring survival tale The Salt Path
Like the many who made it a bestseller, Marianne Elliott read The Salt Path when it first came out in 2018. Raynor 'Ray' Winn's story was about how she and her farmer husband, Moth, had dealt with financial ruin, homelessness and a devastating medical diagnosis – by walking the 1000km
