The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society (12A)
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Dir: Mike Newell; Starring: Lily James, Michiel Huisman, Glen Powell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Tom Courtenay, Penelope Wilton, Katherine Parkinson, Matthew Goode.
12A cert, 124 mins. Mike Newell’s adaptation of Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’s epistolary novel is a film you don’t spend time with so much as spend time in: every location in this irresistible romantic mystery is like a little mini-break for the soul, every costume and piece of set-dressing nibble-ably gorgeous, and every character a pleasure to keep company with, even the rotters. |
Lily James leads the ensemble cast as Juliet Ashton, a London-based author who seizes on an opportunity to speak at a book group on Guernsey as a way to wriggle out of an impending promotional tour for her latest work – a volume of Pooterish skits on wartime life that sells handsomely but isn’t who she is.
The year is 1946, and the bright new coats of paint on every other front door speak to a common appetite for fresh starts. But as soon becomes evident, some of the past few years’ secrets have not yet been buried as deeply as their keepers might like.
Juliet’s invitation was extended by Dawsey Adams, a farmer and member of the island’s Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which was founded in 1941 after an illicit hog roast, when he and some friends were stopped by the occupying Nazi forces and had to cook up an excuse, and then a name, on the spot. Played by the Game of Thrones actor Michiel Huisman, Dawsey is less of a conventional heartthrob than a kind of stealth hunk, whose sex appeal grows so gradually it virtually qualifies as a plot twist.
Anyway, what began as a ruse soon became a regular pastime, with postmaster Eben (Tom Courtenay) and his grandson Eli (Kit Connor), gin maker Isola (Katherine Parkinson) and mother hen Amelia (Penelope Wilton) coming together every week for a momentary escape from the German boots tramping the cobbles outside.
Yet when Juliet joins them on Guernsey – ravishingly played by Devon and Cornwall, in something of a tourism coup – there is a question mark hanging over the whereabouts of Elizabeth McKenna (Jessica Brown Findlay), the group’s one-time keystone whose absence no-one seems keen to discuss.
Juliet smells a good story, but also finds herself drawn to the group as kindred book-lovers –not least of all Dawsey, who is a welcome self-effacing counterpoint to Juliet’s fiancé Markham (Glen Powell), a flash American GI stationed in London, who marks her departure for Guernsey by putting a diamond on her finger the size of a Malteser.
The year is 1946, and the bright new coats of paint on every other front door speak to a common appetite for fresh starts. But as soon becomes evident, some of the past few years’ secrets have not yet been buried as deeply as their keepers might like.
Juliet’s invitation was extended by Dawsey Adams, a farmer and member of the island’s Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which was founded in 1941 after an illicit hog roast, when he and some friends were stopped by the occupying Nazi forces and had to cook up an excuse, and then a name, on the spot. Played by the Game of Thrones actor Michiel Huisman, Dawsey is less of a conventional heartthrob than a kind of stealth hunk, whose sex appeal grows so gradually it virtually qualifies as a plot twist.
Anyway, what began as a ruse soon became a regular pastime, with postmaster Eben (Tom Courtenay) and his grandson Eli (Kit Connor), gin maker Isola (Katherine Parkinson) and mother hen Amelia (Penelope Wilton) coming together every week for a momentary escape from the German boots tramping the cobbles outside.
Yet when Juliet joins them on Guernsey – ravishingly played by Devon and Cornwall, in something of a tourism coup – there is a question mark hanging over the whereabouts of Elizabeth McKenna (Jessica Brown Findlay), the group’s one-time keystone whose absence no-one seems keen to discuss.
Juliet smells a good story, but also finds herself drawn to the group as kindred book-lovers –not least of all Dawsey, who is a welcome self-effacing counterpoint to Juliet’s fiancé Markham (Glen Powell), a flash American GI stationed in London, who marks her departure for Guernsey by putting a diamond on her finger the size of a Malteser.
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