The Nest

Jude Law and Carrie Coon excel in a perceptive examination of marriage and masculinity.

Jude Law and Carrie Coon

It’s odd: the impression that you get from watching The Nest is that it sets out with absolute assurance determined to do its own thing but then late on it loses that confidence. The writer/director is the American Sean Durkin whose debut feature Martha Mary May Marlene won major awards in 2011. We have had to wait until now for him to direct again other than for a TV mini-series in 2013, but The Nest sees him back as both writer and director and it seems to promise a work as individual as its predecessor. In each case we have a very well-acted film with a tone of its own and one that refuses to pander to the formulas and expectations of commercial cinema.

In The Nest Durkin is quietly studying a marriage under strain but eschewing the extra drama favoured in such recent pieces as the similarly concerned The Killing of Two Lovers (2020). Durkin’s couple are Rory and Allison played by Jude Law and Carrie Coon. He is English and devoted to his career as an investment banker and she is American, a woman with a love of horses who keeps her own stable. On the surface all appears to be well with them and their 10-year-old son Ben (Charlie Shotwell), while Allison’s daughter from a previous marriage, Samantha (Oona Roche), now a teenager, is also part of the household. The couple patently married for love, remain sexually content with one another and have adopted a wealthy life-style.

What follows is not out of the ordinary although very early on we do find the family returning to England. They had gone to New York to be near Allison’s parents but Rory’s work there has left him dissatisfied and, since they can afford to take a lease of a manor house in Surrey, Rory, having checked that an opening with his former boss (Peter Hamilton Dyer) awaits him in London, insists that they move: it is essentially his decision, but he claims that he works not for himself but to benefit his family.

The Nest sets out as a deliberately understated film that rings true. It is characteristic of the piece that there is no big argument about the move yet a passing comment alerts us to the not insignificant fact that this will be the fourth time that the family have moved. Most of the film takes place in England and it is there that it becomes increasingly clear that Rory’s biggest concern in life is to be upwardly mobile and admired for his business skills even though in that regard he is a risk taker. The underlying theme, subtly realised, is that Rory O’Hara’s ambitions and his desire to be seen as an alpha male have come to dominate his life at the expense of what the rest of the family need and want. The Nest is set in 1986 and audiences can decide for themselves if this portrait of a patriarchal marriage is simply of a piece with the period or something which is still more common than one might suppose now that social attitudes have seemingly changed.

Jude Law and Carrie Coon give performances perfectly attuned to the style set by Durkin and in a cameo role as Rory’s mother Anne Reid matches them. The film’s approach may avoid the big scenes of other marital dramas, but in doing so it is its own thing and impressive with it until late on. What is so unexpected about the last quarter of The Nest is the fact that Durkin suddenly turns up the drama. Admittedly he may not turn it up to eleven as in the well-known phrase from This Is Spinal Tap, but, in scenes that come close together and are sometimes intercut, he piles on a series of dramatic high spots. Thus we have Allison speaking out fatally and deliberately at a business dinner, Samantha getting caught up in a yuppie rave, a revelation about the burial of a dead horse and Rory becoming involved in a confessional with a taxi driver whose philosophy has a crucial impact on him.

In another work such scenes might get by, but here the sense they do not fit the tone that has been established make for a decidedly weak conclusion. Nevertheless, the subject matter is interesting and the acting is strong so The Nest is far from worthless even if its later stages disappoint. Unexpectedly, there is one exception to this serious falling off since the final scene of all regains the quality that has been lost being quiet and subtle as it leaves the audience to read it as they choose.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Jude Law, Carrie Coon, Oona Roche, Charlie Shotwell, Peter Hamilton Dyer, Tanya Allen, Tattiowna Jones, Marcus Cornwall, Wendy Crewson, Michael Cullen, Adeel Akhtar, Annabel Leventon, Anne Reid.

Dir Sean Durkin, Pro Amy Jackson and Christina Piovesan, Screenplay Sean Durkin, Ph Mátyás Erdély, Pro Des James Price, Ed Matthew Hannam, Music Richard Reed Parry, Costumes Matthew Price.

Element Pictures/BBC Films/Elevation Pictures/FilmNation Entertainment-Picturehouse Entertainment.
107 mins. UK/Canada. 2020. Rel: 27 August 2021. Cert. 15.