Sian Phillips Archives

Review: ‘Dream Horse,’ starring Toni Collette and Damian Lewis

May 23, 2021

by Carla Hay

Toni Collette and Owen Teale in “Dream Horse” (Photo by Kerry Brown/Bleecker Street and Topic Studios)

Directed by Euros Lyn

Culture Representation: Taking place from 2002 to 2009, in various parts of the United Kingdom (particularly in Wales), the dramatic film “Dream Horse” features an almost all-white cast of characters (with one person of Indian/South Asian heritage) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A middle-aged woman, who works as a bartender and a supermarket cashier, convinces people in her working-class neighborhood to pool their money to breed a racehorse, despite knowing that they have a lot of odds stacked against them that the horse will become a champion.

Culture Audience: “Dream Horse” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in “against all odds” stories and movies about horse racing.

Pictured in front row: Owen Teale, Toni Collette and Damian Lewis in “Dream Horse” (Photo by Kerry Brown/Bleecker Street and Topic Studios)

“Dream Horse” is an against-all-odds horse racing story that is utterly formulaic but completely charming, thanks to admirable performances from the cast, led by Toni Collette and Damian Lewis. The movie is based on a true story, which is why even some of the far-fetched moments have a tone of authenticity. You don’t have to be a fan of horse racing to enjoy the movie, because it’s ultimately a story about the triumph of underdogs and anyone who is often underestimated.

Directed by Euros Lyn and written by Neil McKay, “Dream Horse” begins in 2002, with a look at the humdrum life of Jan Vokes (played by Collette), a middle-aged Brit who is barely making ends meet with two jobs in the former mining village of Cefn Fforest in South Wales. By day, she works as a supermarket cashier. By night, she’s a bartender at a social club whose attendees are mostly middle-aged and elderly people. In addition, Jan has to care for her elderly, ailing parents Bert (played by Alan David) and Elsie (played by Lynda Baron), who has to use a wheelchair after experiencing a fall.

Jan’s home life and marriage are pretty stagnant at the beginning of the story. Her husband Brian (played by Owen Teale) barely pays attention to her, especially when he’s watching farming shows on TV. Brian used to be physically active, but his arthritis has left him unable to work, so Jan is the breadwinner for the household. Jan mentions to Brian that it would be easier to take care of her parents if her parents lived with her and Brian, but Brian doesn’t really respond to that suggestion.

Jan and Brian have two adult children named Dennis and Sasha, who are mentioned but not seen in the movie, since they no longer live with Jan and Brian. These “empty nest” spouses love animals, so they have ducks, a whippet and several pigeons that are part of their household too. Jan bears most of the responsibility for taking care of everyone in her household. And it’s starting to weigh heavily on her.

Brian and Jan are in no danger of breaking up, but Jan feels underappreciated, bored and stuck in a rut. One evening, while working at her bartender job, Jan ovehears a man talking happily and enthusiastically about the race horse that he used to own with a syndicate. The man is sitting at a table with a group of five other men, and he has the group enraptured with his stories.

Jan asks her boss Gerwyn Evans (played by Steffan Rhodri) about this charismatic man. She finds out that his name is Howard Davies (played by Lewis), and he’s a horse racing enthusiast who nearly lost everything (his life savings, house and marriage) after his horse racing syndicate went out of business. Howard now works as a corporate accountant for wealthy clients, and most of his job entails helping his clients legally avoid paying taxes.

Jan is so intrigued by Howard’s passion for horse racing that she begins to research what it takes to own a race horse. She starts by picking up a Horse & Hound magazine at her job. In the magazine, she sees an ad for the latest edition of “Directory of the Turf: The International Guide to Horse Racing.” She buys the book and finds out that it would be possible to breed a racehorse with people in her working-class neighborhood if they pooled their resources for a few years.

The first person Jan shares this idea with is Brian, who is immediately skeptical. His reaction is to laugh and say, “It’s absolute madness!” Undeterred, Jan convinces Brian to help her buy a mare named Rubell. The next step will be to take the mare to get impregnated by a stud stallion, which costs money that Jan and Brian don’t have.

It’s now 2003, and Jan puts her plan into motion to get people in the economically depressed neighborhood to pool their resources and form a horse racing syndicate. When Jan sees Howard at her bartender job, she tells him about her idea for the townspeople to form a syndicate, and she asks him for his expert advice. Howard tells Jan, “It’s mostly wealthy, professional men who go for this kind of thing.”

Jan replies with a huff, “I wasn’t asking for your help anyway.” Because she’s strong-willed and determined, Jan decides to see what she can do on her own to form the syndicate. She makes flyers that say, “Breed a Horse to Get on Course!” The flyers are for the first meeting for potential syndicate members. But when Jan hands out the flyers on the street outside of a facility that takes bets on horse races, she experiences unenthusiastic and apathetic responses.

Jan also puts up flyers around the neighborhood about this first meeting, which will be held at the social club where she works as a bartender. The evening of the meeting, the turnout starts out as dismal: The only attendees are Jan, Brian, Howard and Gerwyn. About 15 minutes after the meeting starts, just as they start to think that they should cancel the meeting, one person arrives, then another, and then another, and so on.

Eventually, 18 people decide to join the syndicate (some of them joined after the first meeting), with Jan as the unofficial leader, since the syndicate was her idea. Most of the group consists of middle-aged people, but there are a few people under the age of 40 and a few who are elderly. During their first meeting, they also agree that no major decisions will be made without putting the decisions up for a group vote. Howard also warns the group that there’s less than a 1% chance that the horse they’ll breed will win a race, but no one backs out of this risky business venture.

The next order of business is to get Rubell impregnated. The syndicate raises enough money for Jan and Brian to take Rubell to a stud farm, where Rubell is matched with a stallion with a race horse lineage. Rubell gives birth to a colt, but she dies shortly after giving birth. Jan and Brian feel even more dedicated to taking care of this colt, now that he is an orphan.

During a syndicate meeting, the group votes on what to name the colt. Jan comes up with the name Dream Alliance (which is a nod to their group), and this name suggestion gets the most votes. Dream Alliance is now on his way to becoming a race horse, but only after he gets the proper training, which requires more money. Because of his experience as an accountant, Howard takes on accounting duties for the syndicate.

By 2006, the syndicate has raised enough money for Dream Alliance (now 3 years old) to be sent to a race horse trainer. Howard suggests Philip Hobbs (played by Nicholas Farrell), who runs one of the best horse racing training facilities in Wales. Jan and Brian bring Dream Alliance to the training facility, with the assumption that Howard made an appointment for them.

But to Jan and Brian’s dismay, Philip tells him that he’s never heard of Howard, and he doesn’t have time for them if they don’t have an appointment. Jan angrily says she can take Dream Alliance to a competitor. Philip sees that Dream Horse might have potential, based on the horse’s physique, and that Jan and Brian have already traveled a long distance to get to the facility. And so, Philip changes his mind and agrees to give Dream Alliance a test run.

You know what happens next: The horse starts off kind of shaky, but then gets the hang of it and starts running like a potential champion. Philip agrees to take on Dream Alliance for training. Then there’s the predictable scene of Jan giving an emotional goodbye to Dream Alliance, since the horse now has to live at the training facility.

The rest of the movie is exactly what you would expect it to be. There are victories and disappointments. And there’s one major championship race at the very end (the 2009 Welsh National), where Dream Alliance faces his biggest challenge after a potentially career-ending setback. Getting him to that race is also fraught with tension because members of the syndicate have different opinions on whether or not Dream Alliance should be in that race.

In “Dream Horse,” Jan is depicted as the driving force and leader of the syndicate, but there are other members whose personalities get some screen time. Brian is Jan’s supportive husband who usually takes her side when the group members disagree. Their involvement in the syndicate also puts a spark back into their marriage.

However, they have a big argument where Jan tells Brian that she thinks he’s become too complacent in life. Jan shouts, “When I first met you, you were a fighter! Now, you just accept things, and you don’t fight anymore!” Brian replies in a resigned tone, “So what your dad said was right: You could’ve done a lot better for yourself.”

There’s another hint that Jan has “daddy issues” when she gets upset with her father Bert for not seeming to care about her horse racing activities whenever she brings up the subject to him. Bert’s seeming indifference is hurtful to Jan, because when she was a child, Bert and Jan spent a lot of father-daughter time getting involved in animal races. These memories are part of one of the most tearjerking scenes in the movie.

Howard is extremely passionate about horse racing, but it’s come at a cost of nearly losing the trust of his wife Angela Davies (played by Joanna Page), who has made Howard promise her that he won’t get involved in horse racing again after it nearly ruined them financially. At one point in the movie, Howard confides in Jan about something from his family’s past (which won’t be revealed in this review) that heavily influenced him to follow his dreams in horse racing. There comes a point in the story when Howard has to decide how much longer he can keep his return to horse racing a secret from Angela and if he wants to stay in the corporate accounting job that he despises.

Other members of the syndicate who get notable screen time include:

Gerwyn Evans, Jan’s bartender boss, who is the most likely to see Dream Alliance as a money-making entity.
Maldwyn Thomas (played by Anthony O’Donnell), a know-it-all who likes to do a lot of research.
Anthony Kerby (played by Karl Johnson), who’s a “no filter” drunk in his 70s and who provides most of the movie’s comic relief.
Maureen Jones (played by Siân Phillips), a lonely retiree who has a fondness for eating Tunnock’s milk chocolate tea cakes.
Peter Woodall (played by Asheq Akhtar), a co-worker of Howard’s and the only person of color in the group.
Gordon Hogg (played by Brian Doherty), a co-worker of Howard’s.
Kevin “Kev” French (played by Rhys ap William), a neighbor of Howard’s.
A goofy man in his early 20s nicknamed “Goose” (played by Darren Evans), the youngest member of the group.
Nerys Driscoll (played by Di Botcher), who likes wearing straw hats.
Lee Baldwin (played by Gerald Royston Horler), who is Alun Baldwin’s brother.
Alun Baldwin (played by Rhys Horler), who is Lee Baldwin’s brother.

There are times when the syndicate has to choose between greed and the well-being of Dream Alliance. Naturally, when Dream Alliance starts winning major races, he catches the attention of a wealthy horse owner named Lord Avery (played by Peter Davison), whose champion horse Fearless Pursuit is one of Dream Alliance’s competitors. Not surprisingly, there’s conflict in the group over money issues and control.

It’s easy to predict which members of the syndicate will clash the most with Jan, who is not motivated by making money from Dream Alliance but is motivated by the pride and joy that Dream Alliance is bringing to their community. And it also isn’t too surprising when some members of the group remind Jan that she’s not allowed to have too much power in the syndicate, since all of the members of the group have to vote on major decisions together.

“Dream Horse” has perfectly satisfactory direction in its thrilling horse race scenes, as well as the interactions that the humans have with each other. Collette’s Jan character is really the heart and soul of the story though. When she finally starts to smile and feel like her life matters, her happiness is infectious to the people around her and to people who watch this movie. Jan’s transformation is a reflection of this movie’s message that this race horse was never about the prize money but about what can happen when people take big risks on a dream, even with seemingly huge obstacles in their way.

Bleecker Street and Topic Studios released “Dream Horse” in U.S. cinemas on May 21, 2021. The movie’s VOD and digital release date is June 11, 2021.

Review: ‘Summerland,’ starring Gemma Arterton, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Penelope Wilton and Tom Courtenay

August 3, 2020

by Carla Hay

“Summerland”

Directed by Jessica Swale

Culture Representation: Taking place in England from the 1920s to 1970s (and primarily during World War II in the early 1940s), the dramatic film “Summerland” has a predominantly white cast (with a few black people) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A reclusive writer who’s a confirmed spinster must battle against prejudices (including her own) about raising a child during World War II, when she’s forced to become a foster parent to an evacuated boy, as she struggles to come to terms with a secret love affair that broke her heart.

Culture Audience: “Summerland” will appeal primarily to people who like period dramas that are about parental issues or LGBTQ issues.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Gemma Arterton in “Summerland” (Photo by Michael Wharley/IFC Films)

The emotional drama “Summerland,” which is set in England, takes viewers on a journey of someone who never wanted to become parent but is forced to take care of an evacuee boy during World War II. The experience has a profound effect on the child and his foster parent in more ways than one, in a story that has a few big surprises. Written and directed by Jessica Swale, “Summerland” also serves as a reminder of how it’s more important to judge a a family by how they treat each other, rather than by society prejudices of what a family is supposed to look like.

The movie begins in 1975, in a rural beachside area of Kent, where reclusive and cranky writer Alice Lamb (played by Penelope Wilton), who’s in her 70s, is working at home on a book, by using a typewriter. She’s temporarily interrupted by two girls, about 8 or 9 years old, who are at her front door, asking for donations to help the elderly. Alice rudely tells the girls before she slams the door on them, “You know how you can help the aged? You can bugger off!”

Astute viewers will notice that that the two little girls who were at Alice’s door have a strong physical resemblance to two women whose close relationship is revealed later in the story. Seeing these two little girls together appears to have triggered some of Alice’s memories, because most the movie then flashes back to Alice (played by Gemma Arterton) when she was in her early 40s, living in the same house, during World War II.

Alice was a reclusive writer back then too. She has an unpleasant demeanor and a moody reputation. People don’t know if she’s going to ignore them or snap at them. And because Alice is a never-married, childless woman of certain age who lives alone, she is the subject of a lot of the town’s gossip, with some of the townspeople believing that she might be a witch. A few of the residents have given her the unflattering nickname “The Beast of the Beach,” which is what they call Alice behind her back.

It’s revealed later in the story that Alice (who has no siblings) doesn’t seem to have any close family members or friends. Her mother isn’t really mentioned, but Alice’s father played a huge role in her life by encouraging her to follow her dreams. Alice’s father died when she was a child, and Alice was devastated by this loss.

Alice isn’t just a cantankerous eccentric. She seems to go out of her way to insult or hurt people. For example, she goes into a candy shop and sees that a little girl wants to buy some chocolate, but the girl’s mother says no because they can’t afford it, Alice buys the chocolate that the child wants. But instead of generously giving the chocolate to the little girl, Alice keeps the chocolate for herself and smirks outside when she can hear the little girl crying in dismay inside the shop.

It’s made abundantly clear that Alice doesn’t like children. And so, she’s very shocked when a boy in his early teens is placed into her care, despite her protests. The boy’s name is Frank (played by Lucas Bond), he’s an evacuee from London, and Alice is told that she received a letter from the foster-care system saying that she was expected to take care of him. Alice claims she never received the letter.

Alice tries to come up with excuses not take the child into her care, but the foster-care system is overwhelmed, and Alice is told she has no choice to take Frank until they can find another foster home for him. Frank’s father is serving in the military during the war, while his mother is still in London. Frank’s mother sent Frank away for his safety, since London was the target of intense bombing at the time.

During Frank’s first evening at Alice’s house, she treats him in an annoyed and dismissive manner. For dinner, she plops down raw food on a plate and says, “You don’t expect me to cook for you. There’s the stove.” At night, she doesn’t really care if Frank will sleep well, and she doesn’t do anything to make him feel comfortable. When Frank tells her that he usually has a glass of milk before he goes to sleep, Alice ignores him.

Upon his arrival in Kent, Frank is enrolled in a school called St. Nicholas, where the kindly headmaster Mr. Sullivan (played by Tom Courtenay) provides some comic relief to the story because of his sometimes befuddled manner. During Frank’s first class session at the school, teacher Mrs. Bassett (played by Jessica Gunning) tells everyone to be nice to Frank when she introduces him to the students in the class. Mrs. Bassett assigns a seat next to an unfriendly girl named Edie Corey (played by Dixie Egerickx), who treats Frank like an unwelcome outsider.

When Mrs. Bassett says that Frank and Edie have to be class partners, Edie tells Frank, “I don’t believe in partners or sharing. I’m an individualist. I’m a maverick. Mavericks are free thinkers.”

Edie’s personality is basically a lot like Alice’s. And so, later in the movie, when Edie and Alice first meet, they seem to recognize these unpleasant traits in each other and clash later during a crucial part of the story. Edie also has an additional prejudice against Alice because Edie’s grandmother Margot (played by Siân Phillips) is one of the townspeople who thinks that Alice is a witch.

Edie and Alice eventually warm up to Frank, who is an inquisitive and amiable child, although understandably feeling anxious about when he’ll be able to see his parents again. Alice gradually opens up to Frank about her spiritual beliefs (she’s a pagan and an atheist), her interests (writing, reading and looking for mirages) and her love life (she says she loved someone once, but it was a long time ago). Unlike other people, Frank is not judgmental over Alice being a spinster with no children, so she appreciates that he seems to have an open mind.

Alice’s love affair is shown in flashbacks throughout the film. Alice met Vera (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the love of her life, when they were both attending Oxford University in the 1920s. They had an instant connection and become close very quickly.

Vera and Alice also lived together, but they kept their romance a secret because homosexuality was considered very taboo in that time and place. And so, Alice and Vera pretended to the world that they were platonic roommates. However, Vera and Alice had very different visions of their future.

Alice was more inclined to want to live openly as a lesbian couple, while Vera was still very much closeted. What ultimately drove them apart was Vera’s desire to become a mother, which Vera said was more important to her than anything else—even more important than her relationship with Alice. It’s for this reason that Vera broke up with Alice and walked out of Alice’s life.

This heartbreak puts into better context why Alice is so embittered about love and seems repulsed by the idea of taking care of a child. But as Alice and Frank get to know each other, they both realize that they’ve grown more attached to each other than they thought they would be. And they start to learn that being a good parent doesn’t mean that you have to be heterosexual and married.

When Frank and Alice start to talk about heaven, Alice tells Frank that “heaven was made up to make Christians feel better.” She says that if heaven were real, what about the people who died before Christianity existed? “Where did their souls go?” she asks Frank, who can’t answer the question. Alice tells Frank that does sort of believe in a celestial place called Summerland, which she describes as a “pagan heaven” that isn’t based on religion but a peaceful state of mind.

And one day, when Frank discovers an old music album of Alice’s and asks if they can play the album, she snaps angrily at him and tells him now. She says the album was a gift from a female friend she used to have. Based on her emotionally raw reaction, Frank can tell that this album has brought back some painful memories.

Frank astutely guesses that the album was a gift from the “past love” Alice told him about on another day. When Alice asks Frank, “Do you think it’s strange if a woman loved another woman?” When Frank says no, Alice bursts into tears at his unconditional acceptance.

Alice then tells him that most people think that same-sex love is wicked: “They think it’s a sin and we should burn in hell.” Frank replies, “It’s not as bad as marrying someone you don’t like.” And then it’s Alice’s turn to correctly guess something about Frank’s life: Frank’s parents do not have a happy marriage.

“Summerland” doesn’t clutter the story with a lot of unnecessary characters. The movie shows Alice and Frank’s relationship evolving in ways that are sometimes sweet, sometimes uncomfortable, but emotionally realistic, for the most part. Arterton’s Alice is the center of the movie, which she carries quite well, because the actress understands that it’s not about making Alice likeable but making her believable.

As foster child Frank, Bond does a very good acting job, since Frank is the person who gets Alice to take a hard look at herself and face some of the issues that she’s been hiding underneath her gruff exterior. Frank also learns some harsh lessons about life during his time with Alice. “Summerland” has some moments that blatantly pull at people’s heartstrings, but if people look beyond the film’s sappy moments, there’s an impactful message about being open to change and finding love in unexpected places.

IFC Films released “Summerland” in select U.S. cinemas and on digital and VOD on July 31, 2020.