It stars Judi Dench, who I personally am familiar with solely through the recent crop of James Bond flicks (but am aware has a lot of fame for her career prior to that), and Maggie Smith who I’m assured is quite famous in her own right. They play two sisters in 1930s England, spinsters who live alone on the coast.
Ursula, Ms. Dench’s character, notices a young man washed up on the beach one day and the two sisters take him in. His presence throws a monkey-wrench in the set-in-stone routine of the titular old ladies, and also manages to shake things up in the community in which they live.
Like I said, this would generally not be my kind of movie. This is because generally such movies tend to be cloyingly sweet or absurdly melodramatic, desperately jerking tears of joy or sadness. Thankfully, “Ladies in Lavender” manages sweetness and drama while maintaining a believable and interesting story.
The focus of the story is on Judi Dench’s character, who has never known love and finds herself increasingly infatuated with the young man who’s living in the guest bedroom as he recovers from the injuries he gained in his shipwreck. This is a good focus for the story because, to be honest, it’s often kinda creepy. I like creepy.
The greatest strength of the film, as well as its greatest weakness, lies in the fact that that central story is only one of a half-dozen or more subplots. There’s the story of the young man, which develops quite nicely once it’s discovered he plays the violin like a virtuoso; there’s the mysterious German-speaking girl who’s painting the countryside, the doctor’s ill-starred infatuation with the aforementioned German-speaking girl… The list goes on and on. There are so many sub-plots that none of them are really resolved very well at the end of the movie, and it’s kind of disappointing that a number of conflicts don’t ever build into any sort of dramatic showdown.
The thing is, though, it works. It’s a slice-of-life deal, and you don’t really noticed that the movie has skipped from one plot to another until the end, when you kind of wonder “What if…?” as far as a number of things are concerned. There’s also a nice amount of tension, as sister gets jealous of sister, and community gets suspicious of foreigner, and young man gets a chance to find fame, all in the rather important-to-the-plot milieu of pre-World War II England.
This is not a great film, nor is it a rousing film. You will not find yourself constantly delighting in witty rejoinders offered by the protagonist, nor will you find yourself weeping as the mighty warrior is laid to rest. You will, however, find yourself engrossed in the small-town drama that is presented here, and also find that you truly care what happens to the characters. “Ladies in Lavender” is based on a short-story, and the literary background certainly shows in the execution. If you like slice-of-life tales about backwaters incidental to history, you’ll find this film delightful. If you’re looking for epic scope, frantic pacing, or something to watch with friends and laugh your ass off at, steer clear.
I like old ladies. My grandmother was quite nice, and my great-aunt meant well. Movies about old ladies, however, are generally not my thing. I leave them to the people who watch Lifetime, and don’t feel like I’m missing much. I was not exactly excited when I received “Ladies in Lavender” at the video store. However, what I’m trying to do with this section of the blog is mention movies that don’t GET mention: stuff that isn’t mainstream-blockbuster-type-material but is still worth checking out for people who aren’t genre-geeks. With that in mind, “Ladies in Lavender” was the most promising thing to come in this week, so I brought it home and was pleasantly surprised.