The Fight review – Jessica Hynes boxes clever in punchy drama

14 March 2019 11:00
Hynes’s debut as writer and director is an engaging story about a woman facing her daughter’s fears – and her own – in the ringEverybody remembers being bullied at school, but nobody remembers being a bully. That maxim occurred to me during this stark, sober, flawed movie with which Jessica Hynes makes her worthwhile debut as writer-director. It feels like a very personal film, well acted by the A-list cast that Hynes has assembled: a cathartic meditation on the need to heal, the need to confront those who do wrong and to confront yourself when you’ve done wrong.Hynes stars as Lisa, a care-home nurse with an unhappy relationship with her elderly parents, strongly and sympathetically played by Anita Dobson and Christopher Fairbank; Shaun Parkes gives a warm and likable performance as Lisa’s partner, Mick. Their sensitive daughter Emma (Sennia Nanua) is being bullied at school by a girl called Jordan (Liv Hill), whose apparently charmless, hardbitten mum Amanda (Rhona Mitra) knew Lisa when they were teenagers back in the day and now seems intent on pursuing a nasty like-mother-like-daughter vendetta against her outside the school gates. Continue readingread full article

Source: TheGuardian