With some hesitation ('Please, not another Brit time-warp experience!') and having recently attended Ladies in Lavendar, with its near-similar historical time-frame, related West-country locale and understated realism of rural mid-20C buttoned-up Britishness - this film could have flopped for this movie buff. (There was a 'foreign' stranger in that movie also!) It didn't. I was quickly alerted at the start with the vertigo-inducing camera pans, setting the cross-nation premise. Apart from the almost-too-real gloominess of mid-century interiors I loved this movie. Fortunately we got outdoors enough to let the sunlight in.
Billed as a comedy-drama, the funny bits were often subtle, sometimes laugh-out-loud, usually juxtaposed skilfully against parallel action. There was enough darkness and complexity throughout that a viewer knew some surreal touches would endure. Cheesiness was not going to rule. Terrific writing, including great cameos of English boyhood-girlhood; wonderfully acted by a stellar cast; brilliant slice-of-history realism and a leading lady who is remarkably reminiscent of the late great Ingrid Bergman...identical smile and eyes, and that same voice! TQOSP kept me musing and reflecting for some hours after. Strongly recommended.
Billed as a comedy-drama, the funny bits were often subtle, sometimes laugh-out-loud, usually juxtaposed skilfully against parallel action. There was enough darkness and complexity throughout that a viewer knew some surreal touches would endure. Cheesiness was not going to rule. Terrific writing, including great cameos of English boyhood-girlhood; wonderfully acted by a stellar cast; brilliant slice-of-history realism and a leading lady who is remarkably reminiscent of the late great Ingrid Bergman...identical smile and eyes, and that same voice! TQOSP kept me musing and reflecting for some hours after. Strongly recommended.