I suppose Saorise Ronan could be a redeeming factor. I’ve never really been a fan of hers, but she’s far better than the rest of this movie. Images courtesy Bleeker Street Media.
2/10 The terrible cinematic execution of On Chesil Beach is enough for a negative review in its own right, but we’d also be remiss to look past the film’s horrible underlying message.
On Chesil Beach opens as two newlyweds, Edward Mayhew (Billy Howle) and Florence Ponting (Saoirse Ronan), walk along the titular beach. Both of them are asexual — Ponting in the sense that she’s disgusted by sex and has no interest in it, and Mayhew in that he is the human opposite of an erection. As they spend the afternoon awkwardly negotiating their first sexual encounter, the film flashes back across their upbringing and relationship.
From the very first frame of On Chesil Beach, its infuriating visual motif is established — vast swaths of compositional space. The frame is mostly empty. You spend the majority of the movie looking at nothing. Somewhere between half and two thirds of the vast majority of the shots are empty space.
Reel Entropy 