Film review: Wartime drama Their Finest loses the battle to find its own identity

Gemma Arterton, left, and Bill Nighy in director Lone Scherfig’s film, Their Finest. Nicola Dove / STX Entertainment via AP

Their Finest

Director: Lone Scherfig

Stars: Gemma Arterton, Sam Claflin, Bill Nighy

Two stars

Lone Scherfig’s latest film is not her finest. This is a shame, as it has all the ingredients for a great yarn – but the movie cannot decide quite what it is.

Is it the story of female ­emancipation? Stoicism during the Blitz? Old-school British filmmaking? A Second World War drama? A romance? A broad comedy?

The Danish director has a long-standing interest in British life: she made the Oscar-­nominated drama An Education, adapted the David Nicholls ­romantic bestseller One Day for the big screen, and directed The Riot Club, ostensibly about the notoriously obnoxious behaviour of Oxford University's Bullingdon Club, from which many leading lights of the modern Conservative party emerged.

Given this track record, Lissa Evans's 1940-set novel, Their Finest Hour and a Half, seems perfect material for Scherfig to weave her movie magic.

It stars Gemma Arterton as ­Catrin Cole, a copywriter hired by Britain’s Ministry of Information’s Film Division to help bring a female perspective to the short propaganda films that played to millions of people in cinemas during the Second World War. Their aim was to boost national morale during the dark days of the Blitz, and encourage America to join the war effort.

Initially Scherfig investigates the social questions this raises, with discussions of sexism, and the perceived role of women in society and the workplace.

Cole's colleague, Buckley, played by Hunger Games heart-throb Sam Claflin, is initially wary of sharing his work with a woman. This is effective both as social commentary and comedy.

How the role of women in British society evolved during the war was an important harbinger for change but, oddly, Their Finest ties the idea of emancipation and growing freedoms to Cole's romantic life. She is forced to confront her failing marriage to a suffering painter when she develops feelings for Buckley – swapping one man for another makes for an odd sort of ­liberation.

When one thinks of Second World War propaganda films, the name of German director Leni Riefenstahl jumps out, so it is great to get a glimpse of how the Brits were using movies in a similar way.

But instead of investigating this propaganda, Scherfig chooses the softer option of lampooning the filmmaking business of the day, through an ageing actor who is realising his star is on the wane (played by the excellent Bill Nighy), a talentless American matinée idol (Jake Lacy) and a hard-as-nails agent (Helen ­McCrory).

By leaving the more serious subject matter in the background in favour of a light-­hearted and predictable romcom, the film loses much of its power, resonance and comedic effectiveness.