Cinema: Lives of Mannerly Desperation

By RICHARD CORLISS

/ "Give me a child when he is seven," Michael Apted might say, "and he's mine for life." In 1963 Apted, later a movie director (Gorillas in the Mist) but then a researcher for Granada TV, helped corral 10 British seven-year-olds and expose their elfin dreams and class prejudices in interviews for the documentary 7 Up. Every seven years since, he has returned to see how his young charges are faring. This time, in 35 UP, they are mostly a dour lot, soldiering edgily on, recounting their promotions and sackings, their new children and divorces. The trio of public school twits, who in the first film sang Waltzing Matilda in Latin, have mellowed into responsible burghers. Poor Neil, the brilliant child and (last time) the homeless neurotic, has settled in Shetland, Scotland, frail but still alive. That is almost the best to be said for the entire group, and they seem to know it; they speak apologetically of the not very much they have achieved. The mannerly desperation that seeps through is heartbreaking. R.C.