Their Finest (15.)
Directed by Lone Scherfig.
Starring Gemma Arterton, Sam Claflin, Bill Nighy, Jack Huston, Paul Ritter, Rachael Stirling and Richard E. Grant. 117 mins
This very British film opens boldly, perhaps foolhardily, with a bored audience being derisive and dismissive about a British film they are watching. Well, there was a war on and London was suffering under the Blitz so you can see why audiences might be more uppity than usual. Their Finest centres on the making of a patriotic British film about Dunkirk, designed to raise British spirits and entice the hesitant Yanks to pitch in. It is a microcosm of the joys and woes of British film: it's a romcom; it's plucky, it's low budget, filled with quality actors doing little more than cameos (Eddie Marsan, Helen McCrory, Jeremy Irons and Henry Goodman all turn up to do their bit), there's a token yank foisted on it to grab the American market, and Bill Nighy is in it.
The film is quite sly in the way that it becomes a film within a film, without being all meta or knowing about it. Arterton, doing a little bit of a Welsh accent, starts working as a scriptwriter in wartorn London, instructed to find something real and authentic to base a patriotic propaganda feature on. We then observe how a simple tale of two timid sisters who tried but failed to make it across the Channel for the Dunkirk evacuation, is slowly rebuilt into a much more audience stirring tale as the various studio and ministry committees take control of the creative process.
It is clever like that, but it also has that British film timidness. So, Arterton is romantically torn between painter Huston and scriptwriter Claflin, who sounds very Hugh Grantish. Bill Nighy is very funny as a vain aging actor, but these are old laughs, one's he's raised numerous times before. At the height of the Blitz, death seems everywhere and there is a moving moment when a character tells an anecdote about how she heard her landlord crying all night in the next room because his wife had died under a bomb. But then the next moment the script has her making the observation that when life is so precious it is shame to waste it, telling Arterton to grab her man. The Brad Pitt/ Marion Cotillard vehicle Allied was a truly terrible film but it did really get a sense of the wanton abandonment of Londoner's sex lives during those Russian roulette times. Their Finest Hours is all terribly nice: even the tragic bits are neatly tragic and the most erotically charged moment is when Arterton has to squeeze past a table that is positioned too close to a wall.
Their Finest embodies another of the traditions of British cinema: the Gemma Arterton film that nobody sees. These come in all different types: the costume drama Gemma Arterton film that nobody sees; the French Gemma Arterton film that nobody sees; the YA bestseller adaptation Gemma Arterton film that nobody sees. They are generally pretty good these Gemma Arterton films that nobody sees and she is always great to watch but wherever they are stored these Gemma Arterton film that nobody sees I'm sure that sweet, charming, moving, but ineffectual Their Finest is going to be the next one on the pile.
Directed by Lone Scherfig.
Starring Gemma Arterton, Sam Claflin, Bill Nighy, Jack Huston, Paul Ritter, Rachael Stirling and Richard E. Grant. 117 mins
This very British film opens boldly, perhaps foolhardily, with a bored audience being derisive and dismissive about a British film they are watching. Well, there was a war on and London was suffering under the Blitz so you can see why audiences might be more uppity than usual. Their Finest centres on the making of a patriotic British film about Dunkirk, designed to raise British spirits and entice the hesitant Yanks to pitch in. It is a microcosm of the joys and woes of British film: it's a romcom; it's plucky, it's low budget, filled with quality actors doing little more than cameos (Eddie Marsan, Helen McCrory, Jeremy Irons and Henry Goodman all turn up to do their bit), there's a token yank foisted on it to grab the American market, and Bill Nighy is in it.
The film is quite sly in the way that it becomes a film within a film, without being all meta or knowing about it. Arterton, doing a little bit of a Welsh accent, starts working as a scriptwriter in wartorn London, instructed to find something real and authentic to base a patriotic propaganda feature on. We then observe how a simple tale of two timid sisters who tried but failed to make it across the Channel for the Dunkirk evacuation, is slowly rebuilt into a much more audience stirring tale as the various studio and ministry committees take control of the creative process.
It is clever like that, but it also has that British film timidness. So, Arterton is romantically torn between painter Huston and scriptwriter Claflin, who sounds very Hugh Grantish. Bill Nighy is very funny as a vain aging actor, but these are old laughs, one's he's raised numerous times before. At the height of the Blitz, death seems everywhere and there is a moving moment when a character tells an anecdote about how she heard her landlord crying all night in the next room because his wife had died under a bomb. But then the next moment the script has her making the observation that when life is so precious it is shame to waste it, telling Arterton to grab her man. The Brad Pitt/ Marion Cotillard vehicle Allied was a truly terrible film but it did really get a sense of the wanton abandonment of Londoner's sex lives during those Russian roulette times. Their Finest Hours is all terribly nice: even the tragic bits are neatly tragic and the most erotically charged moment is when Arterton has to squeeze past a table that is positioned too close to a wall.
Their Finest embodies another of the traditions of British cinema: the Gemma Arterton film that nobody sees. These come in all different types: the costume drama Gemma Arterton film that nobody sees; the French Gemma Arterton film that nobody sees; the YA bestseller adaptation Gemma Arterton film that nobody sees. They are generally pretty good these Gemma Arterton films that nobody sees and she is always great to watch but wherever they are stored these Gemma Arterton film that nobody sees I'm sure that sweet, charming, moving, but ineffectual Their Finest is going to be the next one on the pile.
