Roger Michell made affection believable and let actors be funny without apologising for tenderness. We value that warmth, though Notting Hill also shows how long he could let a romance linger over unnecessary obstacles.
Fi1m perspective
In Notting Hill (1999), Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant can share a sharp line and still leave us in no doubt that they like each other. Michell gives both the joke and the attraction time to register, without making tenderness seem foolish. We cared about this unlikely couple because he let their affection show through the difference in their confidence. That is the Michell we value: a director who trusts an exchange between actors to hold our attention.
That attention to performance runs through a career which was not confined to romantic comedy. Before Notting Hill came the naturalistic Austen adaptation Persuasion (1995); afterwards, Michell moved between Hollywood with Changing Lanes (2002) and smaller British films. Writer Hanif Kureishi was an important collaborator on The Mother (2003), Venus (2006) and Le Week-End (2013). The Mother explores middle-aged desire, while Venus gives Peter O’Toole a late-career role concerned with ageing and attraction.
His patience could also be a problem. Richard Curtis supplies the lines in Notting Hill, but Michell’s handling of the leads makes the unlikely courtship credible; the second half then spends too long finding reasons to prolong it. Trevor Jones’s score supports the quieter scenes, while the soundtrack as a whole sometimes presses us to feel what Roberts and Grant have already made clear. We would rather listen to the two leads than have the music explain them, particularly when a joke makes their affection clearer. The film remains enjoyable, despite those delays.
Later came another naturalistic novel adaptation, My Cousin Rachel (2017), and the heist comedy-drama The Duke (2020), his final narrative feature. We can enjoy the romance without expecting him to repeat it. Start with Notting Hill for Roberts and Grant, then try The Mother before deciding that he only made romantic comedies.
Biography
Roger Michell (5 June 1956 – 22 September 2021) was a British theatre, television and film director. Born in Pretoria, South Africa, to a British diplomat father, he was educated at Clifton College and Queens' College, Cambridge, where he began directing plays.
He worked as a theatre director at the Royal Court Theatre and as resident director at the Royal Shakespeare Company. His television work included the BAFTA-winning The Buddha of Suburbia (1993) and Persuasion (1995).
Michell's feature films include Titanic Town (1998), Notting Hill (1999), Changing Lanes (2002), Venus (2006), Morning Glory (2010), Hyde Park on Hudson (2012), My Cousin Rachel (2017) and The Duke (2021).
