The film Midwinter Break opens with an intimate flashback to the Troubles of Ireland: A very pregnant Stella is shot by an Irish Republican Army sniper; the milk bottle she just purchased shatters to the ground, her own blood pooling alongside the spilt milk. The trauma is vivid, but its extent is not yet known.
The novel on which the film is based, also named Midwinter Break, begins far more quietly. Rather than announcing its central wound at once, it allows the trauma to surface gradually, disclosed in fragments as the chapters unfold.
Director Polly Findlay told Sojourners that choosing where to show that traumatic flashback was a big question, “the main question” she had in creating the film. By foregrounding the shooting, Midwinter Break pushes audiences to see the entire film as a sort of trauma response.
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From there, the film jumps decades and crosses borders. Stella and her husband, Gerry—now senior citizens in Scotland, where they built a life after fleeing religious persecution in Ireland—are re-introduced on Christmas Eve. Gerry (Ciarán Hinds) drinks whiskey liberally, sealed off by his headphones, music, and inebriation. Stella (Lesley Manville), returning alone from Mass, pointedly pours herself a glass of milk—and quietly buys two tickets to Amsterdam.
Gerry is surprised but delighted by this Christmas gift. Or at least, it seems like he is. Gerry comes across as the type of spouse who wouldn’t say if this trip felt more like an interruption than an adventure. The couple’s love for much of the first half of the film is defined by that sort of polite familiarity. Stella and Gerry speak to one another with a tone closer to courtesy than passion. Their exchanges are gentle, indirect, and often hedged—requests softened into suggestions, statements determined not to intrude.
It’s not until they arrive at St. Nicholas Basilica in Amsterdam that their shell of politeness cracks and we realize that their courtesy isn’t charming, it’s avoidant. Stella turns Gerry’s attention toward artwork and inscriptions recounting the 1345 “Miracle of Amsterdam.” As the story goes, a dying man received holy communion from a priest, and promptly threw up the sacrament. Later, a maid collected the vomit and threw it into the fire. In the morning, someone looked into the fireplace to find the host intact and unburned. Gerry is not impressed. “That seems a bit minor league as miracles go,” he says.
Stella replies, “You know as well as I do, Gerry, that miracles happen in all shapes and sizes.”
“Stella, what happened to you was not miraculous. It was perfectly within the bounds of possibil—”
Before he can finish, she walks away from him.
After the shooting, it seems, Stella turned to faith, Gerry turned to booze, and they both turned a bit away from each other. Throughout the film, the two are often framed in such a way that they’re literally not really seeing each other, observing one another through mirrors, windows, and the water of Amsterdam’s canals. The tension of the movie revolves around whether they will be able to turn back to each other and see each other fully.
After the shooting, it seems, Stella turned to faith, Gerry turned to booze, and they both turned a bit away from each other.
“It’s a love story, but it’s a very grown-up love story,” Findlay told me. “It says something about the nature of a marriage, which is that you do keep having to find the new start, over and over and over again … love is in the persistence.”
The trouble of the film, however, is that sometimes Stella and Gerry’s love story is hard to root for. Manville and Hinds deliver a master class in conveying unspoken longing through their faces and body language, but still, the love they once shared—and the love they might still reclaim—remains difficult to imagine without more flashbacks and dialogue. As a result, the film, like their marriage, can drag.
What we do see is Gerry sneaking off to order another double whiskey, neat, and Stella stealing away to plot a life more dedicated to faith. You get the impression that Gerry might die without Stella. You get the sense that Stella might begin to really live without Gerry. Midwinter Break leaves us suspended between those futures, unsure which outcome to root for.
Perhaps then, it’s appropriate that the film concludes in a classic space of suspension: the airport. At their gate, grounded by their grossly delayed flight, Gerry and Stella are finally honest with each other. Gerry names the shame of his alcoholism; Stella expresses the fervor of her faith—and her desire for Gerry to respect it even if he can’t believe in it. They arrive, belatedly, at the understanding that a marriage cannot survive on courtesy alone. You can only save a marriage by interrogating past traumas head-on, crying over spilt milk, and not fussing over what qualifies as a miracle.
Because it would take a minor league miracle to save Gerry and Stella’s relationship. The question Midwinter Break leaves us with is not whether love can endure, but whether Gerry and Stella are willing to place what remains of it into the fire—to discover whether it will be consumed or transformed.
‘Midwinter Break’ is now playing in theaters.
Jenna Barnett is the culture editor at Sojourners and the producer of the award-winning podcast Lead Us Not.
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