“The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society”
Sunday 20th January 2019, doors open 6:30pm, film starts 7pm
Come along and support Theale’s Film Club and have a real “treat” (and we don’t just mean the pie!)
Lily James plays Juliet Ashton, the bestselling British author of witty but shallow wartime vignettes, who is engaged to a terribly handsome American. But now the war is over, she is yearningly dissatisfied and longs for something to tap creatively into the real pain that is still in her heart (the film gestures at the bereavement she suffered in the blitz). And James wears 40s fashions with some style.
Then Juliet gets what amounts to a fan letter from one of the handsomest pig-farmers in the world, a stubbled exquisite called Dawsey Adams (Michiel Huisman), based in Guernsey. Juliet heads down there to speak at the eccentrically named local Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and meet the gallery of adorable eccentrics (played by the likes of Tom Courtenay and Penelope Wilton) whose society was born in semi-defiance of the German occupation.
Soon Juliet uncovers a painful secret, whose details are revealed and then quickly passed over. We meet a good German, a chap who helps in Dawsey’s farm like a sort of Wehrmacht James Herriot. We hear about a child who works at the island’s slave labour camp, and about a horrible moment at a concentration camp. That child, and the camp, occupy the briefest flashbacks and largely off-camera moments, before we’re whooshed back to picturesque cosiness and comfiness. All the actors create loveable eccentric characters but Penelope Wilton really does pull all the acting stops to make you feel her bereavement….you’ll find out why if you come and watch!
So, a nice Sunday evening leisurely treat. Look forward to seeing you!
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