Peter's Friends - Freunde sind die besten Feinde

Good, solid drama in the best British style, replete with witty dialogues, more or less a showcase for Kenneth Branagh to bestow upon us something that is not in the least Shakespearian. Nicely-paced development lets the principal characters ease their way into the proceedings in an orchestrated way, such that there is a fine balance in screen presence as well as in the interwoven combinations of the players from scene to scene, very much in the straight theatre tradition. Therein lies a possible weakness: the film has a straight-jacket feel to it, as though indeed it was too severely and strictly transposed from the stage to the screen.

Very much in the vein of a `battle of the sexes', we have in `Peter's Friends' several couples meeting some years after graduating, supposedly to remember old times. I rather fancy that the ladies win this battle by a slight margin, as the performances by Imelda Staunton, Emma Thompson and Alphonsia Emmanuel manage to pull off a finely-tuned upper-hand over the gentlemen.

This is about the third time I have seen this film - and will doubtlessly see it again. However, having recently seen `Gosford Park' a couple of times, I cannot help marrying up the two films - and thus falling into the trap of comparing them. `Gosford Park' comes out clearly the winner: Altman's masterpiece.