May 10, 2012

On April 28, 2000 David got his first mention in the Los Angeles Times in a review of The Last September.

This is one of the best reviews for the film that I've read. Here are some excerpts:

"'The Last September,' a luminous, piercing film from the Elizabeth Bowen novel, richly evokes a world of privilege on the verge of disintegration....Meanwhile, Lois is being pursued by Gerald ( David Tennant ), a deeply smitten British army captain, but as "The Troubles" escalate, Lois finds herself increasingly drawn to her childhood friend Peter (Gary Lydon), an Irish freedom fighter hiding in an old mill on her uncle's estate. 

Performances are impeccable in their inflections and nuances. There is a cold viciousness in the Naylors' obtuse snobbery that prevents you from caring what happens to them or to their way of life, and, of course, Gambon and Smith provide the couple with bleakly amusing shadings. Hawes is deft at expressing the occasional awkwardness and gaucheness of the likably naive but imaginative Lois. Tennant, Wilson, Birkin, Lydon and others lend faultless support, but the film's dazzler is Shaw, she of the unsettlingly direct gaze, undisguised intelligence and angular beauty--her features might be those of Mary Astor stylized by Modigliani.

John Bright's period costumes are as exquisite as they are accurate, and those for Shaw's Marda rightly look toward a sleeker future. The film's sense of time and place could not seem more authentic, thanks to painstaking production designer Caroline Amies, and Slawomir Idziak's lush, dark-hued camera work, which captures the beauty of this special world.

By the time this splendid film is over, not only do you understand how these Anglo-Irish aristocrats earned the enmity of both ordinary Irish people and the British military but also come to share this view." - Kevin Thomas