Midwinter Break is what I like to call a city-travelogue romance. 

The defining trait of this cinematic ilk: a tourist couple wander through a foreign city, and the state of their relationship informs how they interact with the urban terrain — the local sights and sounds, the culture, the museums, the food, the restaurants, the architecture, the people, the history — which in turn speak back to their relationship. 

Past exemplars of the genre: Michelangelo Antonioni, Journey to Italy, the Before trilogy (we are three years overdue for a fourth installment), Columbus, etc. 

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Midwinter Break and Robert Icke’s Oedipus task Lesley Manville with emotional whirlwinds of 11 o’clock monologues, stories about a childhood trauma that they’ve never told anyone before. 

Manville is one of our greats.