Thick on the ground from the ‘70s to the ‘90s, eccentric little British dramedies (eccentric towns with eccentric characters, cuisine & customs backing comedy, romance, adventure) now rare as a hen’s tooth theatrically. Migrated to PBS and various Brit-centric streaming sites, the genre never the same after Bill Forsythe left the field. Yet here’s a worthy revised example of the form, servicing the old rom-com tropes while moving the goal line toward the modestly tragic. A first feature film based on a Penelope Fitzgerald novel (something of Barbara Pym to her), it’s very well acted by Emily Mortimer, playing a young war widow (it’s the late ‘50s), who opens a progressive/literary bookshop in a historic old house only to find herself at war with rich, self-appointed civics & cultural leader Patricia Clarkson, hoping to use the building as a local arts center. (Such a convincing upper-crust accent from this New Orleans born gal!) But Mortimer gets support from the town’s second wealthiest resident, retired book-loving recluse Bill Nighy. Not much drive in Isabel Coixet’s direction, holding to a reticent approach that eventually pays off, not only in character development & growing emotional depth, but unexpectedly in crosshatch third-act plot machinations and devious Machiavellian curve-balls . . . not only from the bad guys. The scale may be small, but the aim is true.
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