Last Day of Summer

Adapted by Ian McEwan from one of his own stories, this is a film of moods, overheard indistinct voices, slowed hypnotic time, and particularly a troubling sense of false security and impending tragedy. In a pot-addled Thames-side commune, Tom, a 12-year-old orphan (McGrath), is befriended by Jenny, a cheerful, overweight ex-teacher (Badland, excellent), who derives a passive contentment from attending to his conventional needs (Tom likes to go to school in uniform). Their affecting idyll is played out chiefly in Tom's rowing boat on the deceptively passive river at the end of a very filmic English summer.