This rather charming romantic comedy set in London in Blitz in the 1940’s is essentially a tale of an accidental feminist who single-handedly saved the British film industry and boosted the flagging morale of the war-torn country’s population. It is one of those old-fashioned feel-good wartime movies which the British always used to excel at where they stoically accepted that someone had to die for everyone else to be happy in the end. Although in this case, this quintessential Brit movie is helmed by the award-winning Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig …. but more of that later.
Catrin (Gemma Arterton) a young girl fresh off the train from Wales, thinks she is applying for a secretarial job at the Ministry of Information but when the boss (Richard E. Grant) discovers she can copywrite, he hires her on the spot to help write a new propaganda movie. Specifically he wants her to write the women’s parts which are derogatory referred to as ‘the slop’.
Catrin is paired with Buckley (Sam Claflin) a rather embittered and disillusioned young writer who cannot resist fighting the Ministry who are insisting that this new movie on the successful Dunkirk evacuation is ‘authentically informed optimism. He is also dismissive of Catrin’s contributions which he insists that she keep re-writing, and as he goes out of his way to act so unchivalrously towards her, it is no surprise at all when later in the story he declares his real feelings.
The main plot of the the film they are making is based on young twin sisters who had commandeered their father’s fishing boat to become part of the enormous flotilla of small craft that took to the sea to help in the biggest evacuation of the war. Catrin had carefully omitted to tell her bosses that the sisters trip had not panned out exactly as all the newspapers had proclaimed, as she was anxious to maintain the notion that these brave heroines had been successful in their part of the mission.
Meanwhile as Catrin is holding down her job at work she is also keeping a roof over her head and that of her older stay-at-home artist ‘husband’ (Jack Houston) who is happy enough to have her pay the rent. However when he has his first Exhibition and now has some money, he expects Catrin to give up work to support him, and is shocked when then this once demure young women now refuses.
The other rather wonderful strand of the story is the casting of their movie and they choose Ambrose Hillard (Bill Nighy) a self-centered veteran actor whose biggest complaint about the war is the fact that the service in his favorite Soho restaurant has gone down. Hillard is hardly in the first flush of youth and the War Minister himself (a delightfully hammy Jeremy Irons) insists that they cast a real-live Airforce Pilot hero (Jake Lacy) who may look the part, but cannot act his way out of a paper bag. It is Catrin who then has to coerce the actors to work together, whilst at the same time coming up with extremely invent new story lines and copy when the Bosses insist on even more changes.
The hilarious shenanigans of making this film for their Government bosses is pitted alongside the harsh realities of the war itself with the constant bombing, and also the everyday rations that make the reality of surviving so tough. Scherfig working with a script from Gaby Chiappe pitches it perfectly ensuring that this feel-good movie does in fact have a positive resolution.
Aterton and Claifin have great chemistry together as the leads, but this is very much an ensemble piece with some terrific performances particularly from Nighy as the veteran actor who can never resist being an old ham, and a delightful cameo from Helen McCroy as his Agent.
What however is the most remarkable element of the whole movie is how Scherfig can succinctly encapsulate yet another British period piece (1960’s suburban London in ‘An Education’, contemporary Oxford in The Riot Club). It’s not just the sets from production designer Alice Normington, or the costumes, but the very essence of Englishness that she seems to understand and can portray seemingly even better than many of us that were born there. It cements the whole piece so beautifully into such a compelling feel-good movie.
