‘North Star’: Toronto Review

Dir: Kristin Scott Thomas. UK. 2023. 95 mins.

Three adult sisters (Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller, Emily Beecham) reunite at their chocolate box childhood home In a verdant and politely pretty corner of southern England. They have gathered to celebrate the third marriage of their twice-widowed mother Diana (Kristin Scott Thomas), but the shadows of the first two husbands (father and stepfather to the daughters), both dashing Navy pilots, both killed in action, loom large in the lives of the women. The directorial debut of Kristin Scott Thomas is a deeply personal work (as a child, she too lost her father and stepfather, both Navy pilots). Still, despite this, it feels cursory and emotionally superficial, full of half-realised storylines and unearned dramatic micro-climaxes.

It’s an oddly uneven, awkwardly structured and cobbled-together collection of scenes 

Of the considerable body of work that Scott Thomas is known for as an actress, this slightly chinless drama has the most in common with the social comedies of Richard Curtis (it’s no coincidence that the story hinges on a wedding). But crucially, the screenplay (co-written by Scott Thomas and John Micklethwait) lacks the crisp timing and comic instincts of Curtis’ work. Some moments raise a laugh, and the talent list (in particular Johansson and Scott Thomas) is marketable. But the film has neither the wit nor the heart to generate much in the way of word of mouth in the older-skewing middlebrow audience that it is clearly targeting.

The three sisters have little in common besides the shared experience of parental loss. Captain Katherine Frost (Johansson), a decorated Royal Navy officer about to embark on a prestigious new command, is troubled by memories of the fathers she lost, which play out in twee little pencil-drawn animated segments. Her younger sister Victoria (Miller), a Hollywood actress, is not above mining the tragedies of her childhood for column inches. The youngest of the three and stepsister to the other two is Georgina (Beecham), a nurse whose concerns about the fidelity of her husband Jeremy (Joshua McGuire) become one of several flashpoints that will ignite the simmering tensions between the women.

The main point of contention, however, is Katherine’s admission to the others that her stepfather (and Georgina’s father) had asked her as a 12-year-old if she would consider giving up her birth father’s surname and taking his instead. She refused. This anecdote, shared with her sisters during the wedding reception, escalates unconvincingly into a heated slanging match during which insults are hurled and at least one of the women ends up in a pond. Other plot digressions include a 14-year-old boy (Victoria’s son) hitting the vodka and getting stuck up a tree at 4am; a wealthy admirer of Victoria, nicknamed Le Grand Fromage, who helicopters into the party and then promptly leaves again; while Katherine’s relationship with her partner and her son is strained by her new job. All of this is accompanied by the musical equivalent of a Farrow and Ball paint chart.

It’s an oddly uneven, awkwardly structured and cobbled-together collection of scenes that, for the most part, Scott Thomas despatches briskly and rather nonchalantly. This is the kind of stiff-upper-lip filmmaking that strides purposefully through the story, preferably with a couple of labradors at heel. If the daughters get themselves into a bit of a collective flap, it’s nothing that Diana can’t sort out with a crisply delivered dose of common sense. Which is all very well, but makes for somewhat unsatisfying cinema.