The Bookshop (a film of awkward encounters and set pieces)

10th July 2018

Photo; Rotten Tomatoes

The Bookshop is a film of the novel of the same name by Penelope Fitzgerald, set along the verdant coast of fictional Hardborough in East Anglia, under Spanish direction. Inspired no doubt by the work of Carlos Ruis Zafón the team has used English actors to bring the book to life. Much of the film was filmed in Northern Ireland.

The premise is that Florence Green (played by Emily Mortimer, who is in theory a middle-aged widow), despite encountering quite a lot of opposition in the form of Violet Gamart (Patricia Clarkson), nevertheless decides to open a book shop in The Old House, a damp and abandoned property in the heart of the town. Violet, who is monied and lives in a very big house, has other ideas and would like to see the building turned into an Arts Centre. She can also pull strings with her nephew, an MP who not only looks like an era-correct Jacob Rees-Mogg but can also swing votes in Parliament to Violet’s advantage.

Bill Nighy, meanwhile, playing Edmund Brundish, who whiles away his years in another big house, (but run down in this case), is a great reader, and naturally he and Florence go on to forge a bond around books. She introduces him to author Ray Bradbury and Fahrenheit 451. He is a total convert to teh author’s work. She also seeks his advice as to whether she should stock Lolita, the hit of the season and psychologically rather disturbing….can the townsfolk take it, is she wise ordering a couple of hundred copies?

Florence takes on the lovely and precocious Christine (Honor Kneafsey) who doesn’t choose to read – yet – but Florence knows that a young girl surrounded by books will soon come around. Then there is Milo North who is a BBC man but lacks the moral backbone to be anything other than a fop and blaggard.

The reviews everywhere for the book are extremely positive “Masterful – Fitzgerald is one of the great English writers“…”a proper gem of a book” (quotes randomly selected from Amazon.co.uk).  So, could the team convert the landscape of the written word into a cinematic delight?  The answer is sadly a resounding no. The setting is beautiful, wind swept and dramatic. The audio accompaniment is either quivering strings or howling wind to stress how run down Brandish’s house is. Pop the kettle on and stoke up the fire in the Old House (just emphasising British stereotypes), where everyone is in knitted garments and you have the gentle susurration of crickets (they need outdoor heat to make a noise). As time ticks on, so does the annoying clock. And then we are back to the whispering wind….

The wonderful location couldn’t compensate for the wooden and stagey feel that seemed to permeate the film. The actors seemed an eye blink away from being right on cue, thus timing felt really slightly out. Some encounters were truly awkward. Long, pregnant pauses seemed to be there to extend the film into a decent length feature film. And finally, there are NO UPVC windows in the 1950s – there is a long scene, just before Florence is due to meet Brundish at his house (where we know by now that the wind will be howling round the eves) when she is cornered by two gossips. The synthetic windows, either side of a leaking drainpipe (again very British) open outwards in full view of the camera instead of sliding up and down as proper casement windows would. Clearly not era correct. And I could go on….

There are some acute observations and some amusing one liners included from the novel, but I felt I had spent almost two hours with staging and actors plucked from the local AmDram Society. Enjoy the book, forget the film.

One nice prevailing memory from the film is the adage that “you are never alone in a bookshop”! Very true for all the bibliophiles out there….

Tina for the TripFiction Team

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