So dull, so respectable, so full of nice touches and pretty things — “Testament of Youth” seems like just the kind of film the real Vera Brittain would have no patience for.
Produced in a well-mannered and fully costumed way by BBC Films, this is an adaptation of Brittain’s celebrated 1933 memoir. We follow Vera (Alicia Vikander), a feisty and brainy young woman, as she rebels against her family’s ideas of pre-suffrage femininity and enrolls at Oxford, hoping to become a writer.
Her education coincides with the beginning of the First World War; her brother Edward (Taron Egerton), her beau Roland (Kit Harington), and two close friends ship off to the front. Vera suspends her study to serve as a nurse near the trenches.
Aside from being lucky/unlucky enough to be young during a significant historical moment, Brittain must have been a remarkable person. That impression comes across in “Testament of Youth,” but it doesn’t come to life.
Longtime TV director James Kent keeps it smooth and thoughtful, which doesn’t suit the tumultuous era. There are scenes of sadness and shell-shock (when Roland comes home on leave he treats Vera as a stranger, or an enemy), and the hospital sequences suggest the horror of war. But the tasteful treatment and plodding writing only enhance the suspicion that a committee has somewhere approved this approach for general audiences.
The cast includes pros like Emily Watson and Dominic West as Vera’s parents, and Miranda Richardson as an Oxford instructor who seems to have wandered in from Hogwarts.
The younger actors have a Next Generation aura; Harington is a player in the ongoing “Game of Thrones” carnage, and Egerton snagged the youthful lead in “Kingsman: The Secret Service.”
As for Vikander — is there a Swedish word for “It Girl”? Since playing parts in “Anna Karenina” and “A Royal Affair,” she’s plunged into big-time Hollywood projects such as “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” and “Ex Machina.” To say nothing of carrying this film while coolly executing an impeccable British accent.
All three perform credibly, but without excitement. If good actors can rise above mediocre material and make it memorable, it’s just as true that they can sometimes be erased by a middling project. This movie isn’t doing anybody any favors.
“Testament of Youth” (2 stars)
An adaptation of Vera Brittain’s memoir about the toll of the First World War on her generation. Fascinating historical period, but the movie suffers from too much good taste and manners — even the cast of rising young stars (Alicia Vikander plays Vera) is thwarted by the bland approach.
Rating: PG-13, for violence
Showing: Guild 45th
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