Book Club: The Next Chapter: a hearty ‘no, grazie’ to this tedious Roman holiday
Previously on Book Club, a quartet of devoted female friends in deep retirement found their lives shaken up by, of all things, reading the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. The 2018 sleeper hit featured surprisingly layered textual analysis, saucy winks to Michel Foucault, and a generally sparkling veneer of haute literary sophistication.
Well… no. As an excuse for watching Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen giggle and gasp at Christian and Anastasia’s tortured antics, that was very much your basic, bottomless-prosecco romp – essentially a late bloomers’ Sex and the City, with Fonda as the goer.
Come round two, even her happy-go-lucky Vivian is in danger of settling down, with Don Johnson – her top beau last time – ready to pop the question. While plans are put in place for their wedding, it’s surely the moment for a girls’ trip abroad, very much in the vein of Sex and the City 2. Before you can say the word “bachelorette”, a dreamy jaunt around Italy is born.
At some point in the writing process for Bill Holderman’s film, it may have been observed that watching four supremely wealthy old white ladies swan around Bella Italia was in slight danger of being smug, tension-free entertainment. To remedy such concerns, their fabulous luggage gets swiped – except this merely provides a perfect excuse for retail therapy.
Speaking of the clothes: Keaton’s ditzy widow is served one monochrome doozy she might as well have designed herself. But Fonda’s experimental outfits, including one horrid thing with bright yellow lapels, suggest she’s lost a game of wardrobe swapsies with Willy Wonka. It’s brave of the film to comment, when Keaton sidles up to needle her, on the “army of people” keeping Fonda’s face so immaculate – cue sidelong titters, and that’s the end of it.
Last time, the warm, ever-natural Steenburgen won best in show. This time out it’s Bergen, who has blithely upped her game as the Candice Bergen quip machine that is Sharon. On Rome: “I love anything that’s falling apart more than I am”. On Vivian’s plans for a church wedding: “I’ll be shocked if you don’t burst into flames crossing the threshold.” Sharon’s the least attached of this lot, and owns the air of doing precisely what she pleases.
Meanwhile, Mambo Italiano is just waiting to drop, and no one (except the weirdly wired Fonda) is rocking the gondola of holiday-romcom pleasure provision. So glibly controlled is the entire cruise, you wonder if it’s without a boatman, gliding on tracks underwater.
12A cert, 108 min. In cinemas from Friday May 12
