

SIMON: Ian, is it painful to render your own novel into a screenplay? Saoirse Ronan and Ian McEwan joined us from London.

It stars Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle as Florence and Edward, a just-married young couple who spend what turns out to be their only marital night - actually, not even a night - in a hotel along the beach in Dorset, where the young lovers fundamentally and irreparably misunderstand each other with everlasting consequences. It's the first film directed by Dominic Cooke. Ian McEwan has done the screenplay based on his acclaimed 2007 novel. You might wonder, in this day and age, how interesting a film can that be? Very. "On Chesil Beach" is the story of an unconsummated love and marriage.
