Toa Fraser’s creaky drama Dean Spanley is a dry-as-dust chamber piece about the relationship between a cantankerous elderly father (Peter O’Toole), and his emotionally crippled son (Jeremy Northam). They meet every Thursday to renew their barely disguised contempt. Their failure to acknowledge, let alone grieve, the deaths of Northam’s beloved mother (illness), and brother (the Boer War), eats like acid into their frigid souls.

An encounter with an eccentric vicar, Dean Spanley (Sam Neill), who believes he was a dog in a previous life, initiates the most unexpected thaw. I can’t see too many children taking advantage of the U certificate. The measured performances look stiff and theatrical. A stifling fable with the rhythm of a grandfather clock.

U, 105 minutes

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