The Salt Path (Marianne Elliott, 2025) & The Lost King (Stephen Frears, 2022)

I’ve got two reviews for you today. First up, The Salt Path by Marianne Elliott, an adaptation of the autobiographical bestseller by Raynor Winn, in which a middle class yet suddenly homeless couple trek around the British South West Coast in an effort to stay both healthy and sane.

I quite liked it so I’m reviewing it a little early. I’m not a box office expert, but I think this emotionally charged movie will play especially well with femme centric audiences, like book club readers or members of walking clubs.

It’s up to you, but if you want more early bird reviews like this (or The Amateur from earlier in the week), this may be a good time to become either a free or (preferably) a paid subscriber, as a modest price of 35 euro will get you a full year’s subscription.

As an added bonus, you can also make a suggestion for me to review a movie or series. And, of course, you will get access to the full 300+ review (and growing!) archive, from which I pulled my review of The Lost King by Stephen Frears for this issue, a movie that is just as quintessentially British as The Salt Path.

Enjoy your weekend!

THE SALT PATH (Marianne Elliott, 2025)

Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs star in The Salt Path, an adaptation of the bestseller of the same name by Raynor Winn.

Once upon a time, British couple Raynor and Moth Winn were doing quite well for themselves. They ran a business, owned a farm and saw their two children grow up and finish school.

Then disaster struck. Moth was diagnosed with a rare neurodegenerative disease (CBD) that usually leaves people with five or six years to live.

To make matters worse, some bad business decisions led to bankruptcy and the loss of both their savings and their house.

And to make it even more cruel, they couldn’t get any emergency housing, because Moth’s situation wasn’t critical enough - he would have to have a life expectancy of less than a year to be eligible.

Seeing no easy way out and feeling as if the whole world had suddenly turned against them, Moth (Isaacs) and Ray (Anderson) did the unexpected.

They decided to face the elements and walk the South West Coast Path, going through the counties of Somerset, Devon, Dorset and Cornwall, all the way to Land’s End.

This was not something to be considered lightly. Not only because of the lack of money, but also because Moth was often in severe pain. His arms, his legs, everything hurt.

And no matter how beautiful the British countryside may be, with all of its rolling hills and valleys, it’s also not to be trifled with, the wind and rain beating down on the duo and their tent.

The Salt Path is a road movie and not a full blown survival drama, but directed by Marianne Elliott from a screenplay by Rebecca Lenkiewicz (Ida) it does at times come pretty close.

Buoyed by great performances from both Anderson and Isaacs you do get the feeling that here are two people going close the edge, both physically and psychologically.

The Salt Path is not a perfect movie. There are a lot of crisis situations mixed with moments of sudden happiness. But at times the movie drags just a little too much, as if it could have benefited from a tighter edit.

And if we’re talking about that old devil called ‘kill your darlings’, there are so many supporting characters that flit in and out of the movie that some of them hardly make an impression.

But in the end The Salt Path does pack an powerful punch. It does show how people who seem to have it made can suddenly fall from grace and become dirt poor.

And the last part of the movie is absolutely uplifting, showing that walking great distances can enormously improve one’s health and lead to a whole new lifestyle, with plenty of unexpected benefits to reap.

I give it four stars!

Note: After premiering in Toronto, The Salt Path recently had its European premiere at the Luxembourg City Festival. It will have its international roll-out in the coming months.

THE LOST KING (Stephen Frears, 2022)

The Lost King is an entertaining and eventually bittersweet and touching feelgood film by Stephen Frears, about Philippa Langley, who made finding the remains of King Richard III her life's goal.

Stephen Frears has always been one of my favorite filmmakers. He’s made great films like The Queen, Dangerous Liaisons and Dirty Pretty Things, to name but a few.

Together with Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope, Frears previously made the film Philomena, about a lady played by Judi Dench who later in life went looking for the son who had been taken from her in her younger years by the Catholic church.

The Lost King is cut from a similar cloth. The fact based story is about Philippa Langley (Sally Hawkins), who in her mid-forties, feels stuck in a rut. After seeing a performance of Richard III with her two sons, she becomes obsessed with the former King of England, who partly thanks to Shakespeare's play, has build up a rather awful reputation throughout the centuries.

This is the crux of the film. Philippa also feels misunderstood, at work and in her personal life. When she says that Richard was a person ‘unfairly judged in life’ we understand that she’s also talking about herself.

It’s probably fair to say that Philippa is suffering from some kind op depression but it would be unfair to say it’s what defines her. She is simply looking for meaning in life, when the regular things (work, family, etc) have failed to satisfy her.

So Philippa decides to quietly quit her job and develop herself as an amateur historian. She does some diligent detective work in search of Richard's never-found bones, in order to bolster his reputation and grant him a well-deserved state funeral.

Along the way she encounters both supporters and opponents, but it should not come as a surprise that the latter category mainly consists of men. While the academic world in general first rejects her and then tries to take credit for Philippa’s hard work.

Hawkins is superb as Philippa and she gets able support from Coogan as her ex-husband, who starts out thinking this is another one of Philippa’s crazy ideas, but slowly gravitates towards her as she progresses towards towards her goal.

There is also Harry Lloyd, who plays Richard on stage and then appears in Philippa’s life as well.

Frears cleverly mixes reality with fantasy in a way that works and gives a feminist touch to an entertaining and at times moving feel-good film.

I give it four stars!

Note: The Lost King is available to stream through platforms like Prime Video, Google Play, Rakuten TV and Apple TV.