DRIVING LESSONS

The crowd-pleasing directorial debut from acclaimed screenwriter Jeremy Brock (writer of MRS. BROWN and CHARLOTTE GRAY and cowriter of THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND), DRIVING LESSONS is a sweetly comic coming-of-age story that was an audience favourite at the Edinburgh Film Festival and won acting awards for its two leads at the Moscow International Film Festival.

Based largely on Brock’s acquaintance, as a teenager, with legendary British actor Dame Peggy Ashcroft, the film follows shy, awkward seventeen-year-old Ben (Rupert Grint, HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE) as he struggles to escape from the domineering bosom of his uptight, Christian charity-worker mother, Laura (Laura Linney, KINSEY, MYSTIC RIVER). No longer content delivering food to elderly shut-ins, helping to accommodate his mother’s latest live-in charity case or turning a blind eye to her obvious affair with a New Age curate, Ben takes a job as a personal assistant to self proclaimed “Dame” Evie Walton (Julie Walters, WAH-WAH, HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE, CALENDAR GIRLS), a boozy, foul-mouthed and wildly eccentric over-the-hill actor who urges Ben to find his own voice and embrace his independence. After Evie tricks Ben into driving her from London to Edinburgh, where the lovely Bryony (Michelle Duncan) helps bring him further out of his shell, a maternal battle of wills ensues between Laura and Evie that forces Ben to assert himself at last – if he can muster the courage.

Reminiscent of such popular, character-driven British comedies as BILLY ELLIOT and ABOUT A BOY, DRIVING LESSONS charms audiences with its pitch-perfect performances and heartwarming script. Grint builds on the sweetly befuddled persona he honed to perfection in the HARRY POTTER movies, while Linney, an outstanding American actor convincingly playing British, conveys a depth of sympathetic humanity beneath her character’s overbearing exterior. But the movie in many ways belongs to the veteran Walters, whose hilariously flamboyant performance fills the screen.

“While Driving Lessons' writer-director, Jeremy Brock, sticks to the all-too-familiar template of such tales, he's given Walters her best role since "Educating Rita." Hamming it up with the precision of a master, she makes this somewhat plodding film a pleasure, as does young Grint.” - Chuck Wilson, LA Weekly