Project Detail

Driving Lessons

Synopsis

The Graduate meets Harold and Maude in this rites-of-passage comedy with yet another dreary school holiday coming around for the shy and downtrodden Ben (Rupert Grint). Seventeen years of living in an absurdly conservative and traditional household with his highly-strung and overbearing mother (Laura Linney) and quiet, mild-mannered vicar father have taken their toll on young Ben. While the other kids are out having fun, Ben spends these precious few weeks attending Bible classes, having driving lessons with his mother and helping out at a local old people's home.

However, Ben's world is turned upside down when he's employed by an eccentric retired actress Evie (Julie Walters). Vulgar, dignified and childish all at once, she certainly is not the kind of person Ben expected when searching through the job listings in the stuffy parish magazine, Hello Jesus. Evie enters Ben's life with a cataclysmic force, whisking him away on a series of adventures from camping to performing Shakespeare in the garden, to attending the Edinburgh Festival - where he finally meets a girl much nearer his own age.

Evie's unconventional and often downright bizarre behaviour challenges Ben's beliefs, and forces him to confront the very idea of who he wants to be. Then, when it seems that his new-found freedom is about to be taken away, Ben has to suddenly choose: should he continue to conform, or break out and live his life as his own man?

Driving Lessons is a heartfelt, touching and positively hilarious look at the effect one delightfully eccentric older woman can have on a young man with a lot to learn.

Details

Year: 2006
Type of project: Features
Running time: 95 mins
Format: 35mm
Director: Jeremy Brock 1st Feature
Producer: Robert Jones, Edward R Pressman, Alessandro Camon, Alexandra Ferguson
Co-Producer: Robert Jones, Edward R Pressman, Alessandro Camon, Alexandra Ferguson
Editor: Trevor Waite
Screenwriter: Jeremy Brock
Director of Photography: David Katznelson
Sound: Colin Nicolson
Principal cast: Julie Walters, Rupert Grint, Laura Linney

Genre

Comedy Drama

Production Status

Complete

Production Company

Rubber Tree Plant Productions

Sales Company

ContentFilm International

19 Heddon Street
London W1B 4BG
UK

T +44 (0)20 7851 6500

Page updates

This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

Suggest amendments

Set and shot along the East coast of England, from Kent through Lincolnshire, to Scotland, CHORK follows fifteen-year-old Kit and eleven-year-old Ani as they leave their foster home and trek across the coastline in hopes of a brighter future. With the police in pursuit and a national search underway, Kit must use all her determination and wits to protect Ani and fulfil their mission.

Drama

Black Church Bay

Director: Rhys Marc Jones

Year: 2026

In a remote Welsh coastal village, the disappearance of an openly-gay sixth form student disrupts the delicate balance of local life for one deputy head teacher, exposing long-buried secrets and threatening to tear the community apart.

Drama

A Time Before

Director: Leo Metcalf

Year: 2024

Olly sifts through his memories searching to understand why he is the way he is. The narrative swings between two contrasting worlds: his memories of his first years, captured by his childhood drawings, and surreal underwater live-action scenes representing his dreams. We witness fragmented memories of a torn family - an abusive father, a mother whose memory seems faded, and a sister, Sally, encouraging her little brother to escape through imagination and dreams. As memory and fantasy blur, The Time Before becomes a meditation on the stories we tell ourselves to survive, and what is lost in the telling. Official Selection Aesthetica Film Festival 2024

Docufiction Drama Experimental Sci-Fi