15, 98 mins
Oddballs hit the road in actorly fashion in Jeremy Brock’s Driving Lessons, loosely inspired by his relationship with Peggy Ashcroft during his late teens. Julie Walters relishes her role as an old lush of a grand actress living in bookish squalor in Hampstead. Rupert Grint, graduating from Hogwarts and Ron Weasley, is the shy vicar’s son and would-be poet who becomes her assistant and learns about life, love and verse away from his smothering mother (a slightly overwrought Laura Linney). A sufficiently bleak undercurrent ensures that this doesn’t turn into Driving Miss Daisy starring Mrs Overall, but the stagey climax is a mistake.
IAN JOHNS