A FILM that is sure to sit right up the Sheep Street of many Craven Herald readers this week is Finding Your Feet from Richard Loncraine.

Imelda Staunton is Sandra, the middle-class wife of a recently ennobled police chief (played by John Sessions). When Sandra discovers that her husband has been having an affair with her best friend (Josie Lawrence) for five years, she flees their suburban idyll to stay with estranged sister Bif (Celia Imrie). It’s something of a last choice for Sandra, whose prim personality sits polar opposite to her bohemian sister.

In Finding Your Feet, Bif introduces Sandra to Charlie, Jackie and Ted (Timothy Spall, Joanna Lumley and David Heyman) at their local dance club to relearn how to have fun. The journey there may be a predictable but, in the hands of this vintage cast, it remains a splendid and very funny one.

“I’ve been married five times and the last one broke down over religious reasons,” says Lumley in one scene. “He thought he was God and I didn’t!”

This film was thoroughly enjoyable.

You may have noticed Saoirse Ronan, the Irish star of Brooklyn and Atonement, at last week’s BAFTAs. Ronan was there as a Leading Actress nominee for Greta Gerwig’s new comedy-drama Lady Bird. The film might have come away empty handed on Sunday night but, in the eyes of many, it remains a hot tip for next month’s Oscars.

In the film, Ronan plays Christine McPherson, a high school senior in Sacramento, 2002, who goes only by the self-given name of ‘Lady Bird’, because “it was given to me, by me”. With her bright red hair and dreams of an east coast education - notionally beyond her financial and intellectual means - Lady Bird is very much an individual, coming-of-age story.

At the centre of the film is Lady Bird’s jarred relationship with her life-weary mother, terrifically played by Laurie Metcalf. Though love binds the pair, resentment is often tangible amid a clash of two distinct personalities.

Lady Bird marks the directorial debut of critical darling Greta Gerwig and it’s an extraordinarily assured first attempt. Resembling the essence of Gerwig’s own adolescence, Lady Bird offers wit and a beautiful eye for emotional truth. Ronan and Metcalf are excellent together and in their company, along with rising stars Lucas Hedges and Timothée Chalamet, this a very fine watch indeed.

- Toby Symonds