I will forever be slightly irritated by films that are set in a foreign country, but in which all the actors speak in English. I’m fully aware that the world has bigger issues to worry about, and that the avoidance of subtitles makes perfect commercial sense, but it annoys me all the same.
So things were not looking promising when Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson piped up in English with German accents near the start of Alone in Berlin (★★★, 12A cert, 103 mins), an adaptation of Hans Fallada’s bestselling novel. Thankfully, I’m not completely mad, and if a film is decent enough I can, after a few scenes, get over the language barrier. This one just about falls into that category, even if a couple of Nazis do pop up to give it the full ’Allo ’Allo! treatment at different points.
