![]() ![]() ![]() On the whole, Chiappe - an experienced TV writer (Lark Rise To Candleford, Shetland, The Level) here making her feature-film debut - does a lovely job of weaving Catrin’s doughty career progress in with her burgeoning feelings for screenwriting colleague Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin).Ĭonveniently, Ellis turns out to be rather a rotter, whereas Buckley, beneath his sneery, superior air, is a decent sort of cove, with a matinee-idol smile.ĭirector Lone Scherfig has a remarkably keen eye and ear for the intricate details of British class and period ‘Obviously we can’t pay you as much as the chaps,’ she is told by her pompous new boss, played, or rather over-played, by Richard E. ![]() But Catrin finds herself firmly at the bottom of the heap. The one female who has risen in the ranks is a rather butch lesbian (improbably yet nicely played by the decidedly non-butch Rachael Stirling). The contemptuous film-industry word for female chatter in such films is ‘slop’ (in reality it was more commonly known as ‘nausea’), and we are left in no doubt by Gaby Chiappe’s script, which just occasionally errs on the heavy-handed side, that ministry women are third-class citizens. In fact they want her to craft ‘women’s dialogue’ for their propaganda features. She is a talented copywriter, who goes for an interview with the Ministry of Information for what she thinks is a secretarial job. Keeping calm and carrying on: Gemma Arterton and Bill Nighy in Their Finest This is the engaging Catrin Cole (charmingly played by Gemma Arterton), not a radiant English rose but a sunny Welsh daffodil, who has arrived in wartime London from Ebbw Vale with struggling artist husband Ellis (Jack Huston). Like An Education, which was based on the memoir by journalist Lynn Barber, Their Finest has also sprung from a book, in this case a novel by Lissa Evans about the making of a propaganda film thinly disguised as a drama, at the height of the Blitz.Īnd like An Education, except more so, the story is, above all, about a particular young woman asserting her place in a world ruled by men. Her 2009 feature An Education wonderfully evoked suburban London in the Sixties, The Riot Club (2014) went to town on badly-behaved Oxbridge toffs, and now here’s Their Finest, a beguiling romantic not-quite-comedy set in 1940. Verdict: Schindler's List meets Doctor Dolittleįor a Dane, director Lone Scherfig has a remarkably keen eye and ear for the intricate details of British class and period. ![]()
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