Brock's latest is reality-driven

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Jeremy Brock has built a solid career writing what might be described as period films.

Judi Dench's portrayal of Queen Victoria in 1997's "Mrs. Brown" was Oscar-nominated. "Charlotte Gray" (2001) had Cate Blanchett as a World War II French Resistance courier. Mr. Brock also co-wrote "The Last King of Scotland," currently in theaters, which stars Forest Whitaker as 1970s Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

For his directorial debut, however, the English writer chose a subject closer to home. "Driving Lessons," which opens tomorrow, stars Rupert Grint (known best as Ron Weasley from the Harry Potter films) as a suburban London teenager who escapes his overbearing mother (Oscar nominee Laura Linney) through his friendship with an aging actress (Julie Walters).

It's a fanciful coming-of-age story, but Mr. Brock says the film is grounded in reality.

"It's based loosely on what I experienced living in a vicarage, being brought up by a very controlling mum, and on the friendship I had with [Dame] Peggy Ashcroft," Mr. Brock says during a recent swing through the District to promote his new film.

"Like a lot of the movies I love, like 'Sideways' or 'My Life as a Dog' or 'The Graduate,' it's a slight exaggeration of reality."

It's close enough to real life to have made writing it difficult. Miss Ashcroft died in 1991. Mr. Brock's parents are still alive, but his mother doesn't know about the film.

"I would not have written the movie had she not had Alzheimer's," Mr. Brock says. "She's the only character in the movie that would be unhappy at finding themselves in it."

Mr. Brock says his movie is "about faith and friendship." Yet, he acknowledges a certain reticence in communicating his own religious beliefs in the film. "It isn't clear. I don't want it to be," he says.

"My feelings about religion are that the best kind of religion is Dad's kind, and it's a kind that allows people to make their own mind up. The worst kind of religion is the kind that doesn't allow for different opinion, doesn't allow you to imagine your own relationship to God. That's mum's religion."