A stodgy drama that even Judi Dench can’t save. It was inspired by the career of British Soviet agent Melita Norwood, who passed on secrets about nuclear energy and was unmasked in her eighties, becoming known as the “spy granny”. It’s almost comical the way the film-makers downplay our heroine’s communist credentials.
The message they want to ram home is better well-bred than red and Trevor Nunn’s first film directing gig in years panders to xenophobes who are fascinated by the Cambridge Five.
It’s the Thities and decent, ultra-English Joan Stanley (played by Sophie Cookson as a young woman, and Dench later), is studying science at Cambridge University, where she attracts the attention of Sonya (Tereza Srbova) and Leo (Tom Hughes) German-Russian Jewish émigrés who are leaking about Britain’s atomic bomb with the Soviets. But she’s disgusted by Sonya and Leo, especially when their ruthless behaviour jeopardises the career of Max (Stephen Campbell Moore), the decent, ultra-English, esteemed physics professor Joan grows to love.
The real Norwood, by the way, went to the University of Southampton. She also had a Latvian father who adored Lenin, and an English mother who groomed her daughter to help the Soviets. Oh yes, and her husband (a humble maths teacher) was both Russian and Jewish. As a widow in Bexleyheath, Norwood bought the Morning Star for her neighbours and, even after she was outed by the tabloids, remained a part of the community.
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What an intricate, multi-layered spy yarn; one that, incidentally, demonstrates how inclusive and tolerant the British can be. Why didn’t Nunn and Lindsay Shapero, who penned the screenplay, want to tell this story?
They probably thinks it’s progressive that Joan is a “brilliant” physicist, constantly patronised by the men around her. But she’s also a total twit. Torn between Leo and Max, she blithers for England. I can’t see this becoming a feminist classic.
As for Cookson; looking nice in a succession of quaint hats does not a performance make. By contrast Dench is incandescently impish, in a voluminous cardie that she wears like a suit of armour. If only she had more to do. Dench is a triple agent but Nunn squanders her talents. What a betrayal.
