Film No. 81 (2017) October 28th. 4.10 PM LUNA Paradiso, Northbridge
"Leave her alone, the woman has done nothing to you." (Mr Brandish pleads with Violet to let Florence run her bookshop in peace).
A rumination of a film set around the quintessential English coastal village of Hardborough. Florence Green (Emily Mortimer) works to overcome grief by risking all she has to establish a bookshop in a town bereft of recreational readers. If that doesn't sound too dramatic then you're right. It's the goodness in Florence and the pride with which she carries herself through the adversity of her meetings with a mean minded bank manager and a killjoy town snob, Violet Gamart (Patricia Clarkson) that gives the film charm. Bill Nighy does what Bill does best and teams with child actor Honor Kneafsey to reinforce the goodness in Florence. Spanish director Coixel brings a beautiful uniqueness to a quirky British setting without a whiff of predictability. 10GUMS.
It was laughable despite the brilliant and restrained acting of the leads.
ReplyDeleteHere is a small remote fishing town, she is 16 years a widow post WW2 ( now 1955-56 ) with little money and no job.
She invests all in a bookshop when they have never had one before, running foul of the landed gentry - the Gamarts
But the stock levels are astounding, shelves groaning with multiple copies of books ( Readings would pale at the quantities ) and she orders 250 copies of the new and highly controversial Lolita.
Some how she is breaking even, just. Then the gentry act and basically bankrupt her and have the shop building declared un-habitable and use a compulsory order to buy it for nothing. So she is now destitute and is last seen leaving on the ferry. Here we discover the narrator was the young girl who worked in the shop - then an arsonist, and now a successful bookseller.
I just groaned at the film - technically it was a mess as well - switching between the narration viewpoints, sometime the child and sometimes Florence, plus the sound was weird, going echoey every time someone left the main frame. But the false portrayal of life as a bookseller was the low point.