Folie à Deux (uncertificated) 101 mins ***
Though it bears the
unmistakable look of daytime-telly property porn, Kim Hopkins’ documentary
offers an eccentric and thoroughly English rejoinder to last year’s The Queen of Versailles. In 2007, Helen Heraty and husband John Edwards moved into York’s
historic Grays Court, staking their (sizeable) personal fortune on turning it
into a hotel. Though the crunch is coming, the film’s focus remains somewhat
narrow: with John away at work, we’re left pottering around the kitchen as
Helen juggles seven kids with increasingly fraught calls from her accountant.
It appears as though Hopkins might just be hanging the couple out to dry for
past excesses – then this war of financial attrition takes a melancholy turn.
Earlier, funnier confrontations counter Versailles’ faded glitz with twitching
curtains, tetchy boundary disputes and plentiful bathos: just when you think
the downturn can’t get any worse, somebody goes and tramps dog poo indoors.
Folie à Deux is playing in selected cinemas.
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