★★★

Rachel Joyce translates her first novel into her first screenplay with The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. There’s more than a touch of the Jonas Jonassonian to the tale, in which a dull pensioner traverses the length and breadth of Britain on foot. Fry boasts fewer comic spikes than Jonasson’s 100 year-old man but is no less eccentric, his story just as strangely believable an anecdote of very human quirk. Joyce’s ponderous words find happy union in the thoughtful eye of Hettie Macdonald, one half of the directing duo behind lockdown hit Normal People, and lush cinematography of Kate McCullough. The plotting is somber and steady but offers much welcome breathing space to appreciate the minutiae of English beauty, town and country alike.