Judged as an actors’ showcase, this low-key British film about a road trip taken by an ageing couple is hard to fault. We join concert pianist Sam (Colin Firth) and author Tusker (Stanley Tucci) just as they are hitting the road for the picturesque Lake District in what will be one last trip before Tusker succumbs more fully to early onset dementia.

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His condition has already manifested and while at present it does not seem too bad, at least to us viewers, he feels it’s getting worse and his doctors predict it will soon proceed at a canter. Tusker (whose name Firth constantly pronounces as Tosca for reasons that may or may not be related to Puccini) is a reluctant traveller but he gives in to his partner’s well-meant badgering. 

Tucci is Hollywood’s finest regularly working character actor, which means he doesn’t get nearly enough opportunities to show us what he can really do with leading roles (though he certainly did that with 1996’s Big Night, which he also co-directed). Firth meanwhile needs no introduction as an actor who has mastered the extraction of  maximum emotion by under-playing.

Yet what else, beyond the...