If you could travel back in time, would you? Should you?
The perennial time-travellers dilemma gets the Richard Curtis treatment in About Time, a gorgeous film about love what else? that got its world premiere on the opening night of the Film 4 Summer Screen season at Somerset House last night.
Like any good world premiere, its cast were in attendance: a brilliant surprise for the assembled audience, a mix of industry guests and the ticket-buying public, sitting on their picnic blankets on the cobbled courtyard, hoping en masse that the rain held off (it did). And there was no glamour lacking, despite the unconventional set-up Rachel McAdams wore Roksanda Ilincic with Casadei pumps; Vanessa Kirby wore Matthew Williamson. Leading man Domnhall Gleeson wore Prada.
I wish we could travel in time so that you could see the film before I have to introduce the cast to you, Curtis said by way of introduction. Because you dont know yet just how brilliant they are.
It was true. (We would definitely have wolf-whistled for Gleeson had that been the case.)
In the film, Gleeson plays Tim, a hopeless romantic, who is told at the age of 21 by his father (the ever-pitch-perfect Bill Nighy) that he has the ability to time travel. But when he falls for Mary (McAdams), he learns that shooting off back in time to right wrongs has the potential to wrong rights, too.
All the typical Curtis devices misfit roommates, passage-of-time montages, a wedding are here, along with a father-son story strand that will probably make you cry, regardless of how much you try t
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Rachel McAdams in Roksanda Ilincic at the world premiere of About Time
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Vanessa Kirby in Matthew Williamson at the world premiere of About Time
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Lydia Wilson (in Vivienne Westwood), Rachel McAdams (in Roksanda Ilincic) and Margot Robbie (in Ermanno Scervino)
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Bill Nighy, Domnhall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams and Richard Curtis