I want to support cinema but I have my work cut out with Love Sarah

Some cinemas have reopened, with the rest to follow by the end of the month, thankfully. But the big, hotly anticipated films — Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, for example, or A Quiet Place II — won’t be out for a while yet, as opening schedules are adjusted. However, there is a new film that is cinema-only: it’s British, and it’s called Love Sarah. It stars Celia Imrie and is about three generations of women who seek to overcome grief by founding a bakery in London’s Notting Hill rather than running away to join Isis, say. (Is it always a bakery in Notting Hill or does it just feel like that?) I want to be kind as I want to support cinema. But I have my work cut out here.

This has the look of a Richard Curtis film, which we would have tried not to hold against it, but on reflection I’d say it’s not even a Richard Curtis film. (See how I have my work cut out? See?) Directed by Eliza Schroeder and written by Jake Bunger, the film opens with a woman riding her bike through London. This is Sarah, played glimpsingly by the Great British Bake Off winner Candice Brown. Sarah is killed in a road accident, which isn’t a spoiler, as it happens at the very start. She leaves behind a best friend, Isabella (Shelley Conn), with whom she was due to open a bakery, and a mother, Mimi (Imrie), and also she has a daughter, Clarissa, played by Shannon Tarbet. (Is it always Isabella, Mimi and Clarissa or does it just feel like that? Would a ‘Linda’ or ‘Sue’ have killed them?) Clarissa talks Isabella into going ahead with the project while Mimi, who is guilt-ridden as previously she had refused to help Sarah, agrees to come in as a partner.