The Carer is a Hungarian-British co-production about a cantankerous old thesp (Brian Cox) and the young Hungarian woman (Coco König) who is dispatched to look after him, much against his wishes, and whom he’ll eventually throw out on her ear. I’m joshing you. She wins him over, naturally, and mutual respect develops, naturally, and a friendship blossoms, naturally, although I wish he’d thrown her out on her ear as that way this wouldn’t have felt like something we’ve seen a hundred times before. There are affecting, powerful films to be made about old age, loss, mortality and dependence, but this, alas, has all the emotional grit of a Driving Miss Daisy. I happened to watch it with my own father (93), who offered a one-word verdict and that one word was: ‘Corny.’
In the film, directed by Janos Edelenyi, who co-wrote with the late Gilbert Adair, Cox plays Sir Michael Gifford, a retired British acting great who has Parkinson’s disease, is fantastically ill-tempered, and spends his days watching himself in old films, bellowing Shakespearean soliloquies, and sparring with his stock villain of a bossy daughter (Emilia Fox).
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