Adapted from a graphic novel by Raymond Briggs, this innocuous but charming UK animation tells the story of the author’s working-class parents from their first meeting in 1928 (when Ethel was a lady’s maid and Ernest a flirtatious milkman) to their deaths in 1971. The artwork is straightforward, the characters archetypal (Ethel is a Tory, Ernest votes for Labour), and their history fondly remembered, as if it’s been polished smooth by years of repetition. At times the movie threatens to melt into a pool of bulldog nostalgia, but it’s rescued by a wealth of authentic social detail, especially as the young couple keep a stiff upper lip during World War II (in the darkest days of the Blitz, they sleep in a bed-sized metal cage to shield themselves from falling debris). Their boy Raymond comes of age in the swinging 60s, takes up art, and marries a woman with schizophrenia, developments that prompt Ethel and Ernest to wonder what it’s all about before they disappear into the past they’ve so lovingly tended. Roger Mainwood directed from his own screenplay.
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