US three. Billy Moon (aka Christopher Robin) played by Will Tilston with AA Milne, his dad, played by Domhnall Gleeson. Photograph courtesy http://www.filminquiry.com

IT TAKES A special kind of perspective and balance to be able to tell a story involving a child as adorable and articulate as young Will Tilston, without ramping up the cute factor and drowning in saccharine. Simon Curtis, director of Goodbye Christopher Robin achieves this significantly well, offering a sense of balance into a story that is as much about a bear named Winnie the Pooh, as it is about shell shock and the horror of fame, as it is about the way in which Edwardian society was so replete with euphemism that empathy was tossed by the wayside.

This film tells the story of the first children’s great classic in English literature which touched a nerve of real values for all children and became the world’s most popular classic for young readers. It presents Tilston as the five or six year old Christopher Robin opposite his dad played by Domhnall Gleeson who is weighed down with the horror of his World War One experience. The child articulates empathy in a way that gives the relationship between father and son the kind of authentic texture that is simply beautiful.

The child is also exposed to a mother played by Margot Robbie, who is almost a caricature of the classic stiff-upper-lip young woman whose everything is described in euphemism and who has no tolerance for anything that might digress and spill over, emotionally. It is the maid, Olive (Kelly Macdonald) who is capable of getting down to the level of this be-smocked tousle-haired child to give him succour and to protect him from the vagaries of becoming the boy whose name is on the lips of everyone.

The film focuses in great detail on the birth of Winnie the Pooh and all the family idiosyncrasies which make it happen. And then it pans to the horror of fame and the intrusiveness of fans and the media into Christopher Robin Milne’s life. Stitched up as it begins, around the spectre of World War, it’s a subtle tale which brings the most horrible of possible news on a bicycle. But there are twists in the material that make it an essay in gentle nostalgia.

It’s curious as to why it was been whipped off the Cinema Nouveau circuit within a few weeks of being released in South Africa. The good news is that it is already accessible as a DVD. A delicious slice of Edwardian life, it’s a film that may not change your life, but it will bring you a carefully crafted dollop of some extra special beauty.

• Goodbye Christopher Robin is directed by Simon Curtis and features a cast headed by Sam Barnes, Amber Batty, Victoria Bavister, Rolan Bell, Nick Blakeley, Sarah Jayne Butler, Stephen Campbell Moore, Jim Cartwright, Richard Clifford, Simon Connolly, Grace Curtis, Matilda Curtis, Shaun Dingwall, Richard Dixon, Vincent Finch, Lance C. Fuller, Domhnall Gleeson, Harper Gray, Stanley Hamlin, Louis Harrison, Dexter Hyman, Sonny Hyman, Cameron Lane, Phoebe Lyons, Alex Lawther, Kelly Macdonald, Allegra Marland, Richard McCabe, Mark McKerracher, Kevin Millington, Vicki Pepperdine, Robert Portal, Nicholas Richardson, Margot Robbie, Tommy Rodger, Mossie Smith, Geraldine Somerville, Mark Tandy, Ann Thwaite, Will Tilston, Phoebe Wallter-Bridge and Simon Williams. It is written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Simon Vaughan. Produced by Steve Christian and Damian Jones, it features creative input by Carter Burwell (music), Ben Smithard (cinematography), Victoria Boydell (editing), Alex Johnson (casting) and David Roger (production). Release date: March 15 2018.