Finding Your Feet: After a ten year separation, sisters Celia Imrie and Imelda Staunton reunite without a drop of sentiment in sight.

A sideways glance at the poster for Finding Your Feet was all it took before I began fanning away the aroma of flop sweat prompted by visions of the Boynton Beach Club Bucket Listers waking grumpy old Ned Devine to fry up a batch of green tomatoes at the best exotic Marigold Hotel. It couldn’t have appeared more cringe-worthy if the cast had jumped out of the poster case and begun licking my face.

So it is with a good deal of pleasure (tinged with a hint of head-scratching bemusement) that I report the needle of my built-in geezer-porn detector failed to jigger even once. Feet will eventually stumble in the direction of the cutes, but don’t expect to find a saccharine-glazed, ham-fisted presentation. Not with this cast!

It’s Cinderella in reverse when a well-heeled snoot is forced to humbly accept life as a commoner. We’re introduced to ‘Lady’ Sandra (Imelda Staunton), a stubby, well-coiffured stiff-neck, mid-preparation for a retirement party being thrown for her husband of 40 years. A fat lot of good the title does her, particularly when ‘Lady’ discovers that for the past five years of their marriage, hubby (John Sessions) had been carrying on an affair with a woman she called her best friend (Josie Lawrence).

On the surface, the ensuing confrontation appeared to be an intimate meltdown between husband and wife. That was before the camera turned and pulled back to reveal the entire gathering looking on in open-mouthed silence. (A similar staging of an equally private encounter is repeated later on in the film, but any discussion of it would be a monumental spoiler.)

Lady S. married a “tosser,” and no matter how many times he repeats, “I never meant to hurt you,” it only acts to convince her that running away from home is the only option. Wishing to avoid being the subject of lordly gossip, Sandra skips town to lick her wounds at her sister’s flat. The catch is that the two haven’t seen each other in ten years.  

Even after she’s introduced, we’re not quite certain just how Bif (Celia Imrie) fits in. Why the name Bif? Perhaps it’s because their father was a man to whom attention must be paid. Or was it a childhood nickname that stuck due to little sister Sandra’s inability to pronounce Elizabeth? Are she and Charlie (Timothy Spall) an item? Is she related to Sandra? Screenwriters Nick Moorcroft and Meg Leonard aren’t the type to rely on dispensing character information in the manner of, “You must be Bif’s friend, Charlie, the one with the dying wife.” Sit tight and all will be made clear.

With Sandra unable to rest during her first night away from home, Bif takes perverse fascination in listening in as her sister’s wails seep through the paper-thin walls. Without a word, she turns off the light, leaving Sandra to cry them both to sleep. Reels later, director Richard Loncraine knowingly shows another side of the relationship by inverting the point-of-view, this time with a softened Sandra responding to her sister’s bad-sounding cough. Once again, to say anything more would do a great disservice to the film, so I’ll ixnay on the oilerspays.

Eventually, mortality comes — as it must to all pictures on the subject of aging — to Finding Your Feet. It turns out that Charlie took to living on a boat after having sold the family house to “free up capital” needed to provide his dementia-stricken wife with round-the-clock care. As her recognition became more and more distant with each of Charlie’s passing visits to the nursing home, it got to the point where he no longer had the strength to bother.  It’s no surprise that loneliness united Charlie and Sandra, but discovering that she had been playing the other woman to Charlie’s unbalanced wife didn’t set well with Sandra.

The movie is not perfect. What it lacks in cloying sentimentality, it makes up for with moments of cuteness aimed at taking the sting away from the inevitable. Dancing is the key to Sandra finding her feet, so not surprisingly, music is worked into story as often as possible. Do people still perform in flash mobs and if yes, shouldn’t they be institutionalized? Still, even when Bif insists on Sandra joining her dance class, Loncraine and his screenwriters do their best to whirligig around any cloying cliches.

If the actors appear to effortlessly deliver the goods, it’s because at one time or another and in various shufflings they have all performed together before. When given the chance (which is always), the cast unlocks moments that are so intimate and naturally detailed one would swear that the actors had no idea the cameras were rolling.

Will American seniors — the same generation whose parents went to their graves swearing that Liberace never found Mrs. Right — be open to a group of “wacky backy” smoking British contemporaries or Bif’s championing of bisexuality because, “It doubles your chances on Saturday night”? Here’s hoping Finding Your Feet finds an audience.