Relative values (Julie Andrews)

(Amazon UK link)

It’s nine years since we watched ‘Relative values’, and we had both entirely forgotten what it was about. That’s possibly because the plot isn’t all that memorable. But we watched it again yesterday evening, and thought it was good light entertainment. Apparently it was based on a Noel Coward play of the same name. 

The opening sequences are quite long and somewhat hectic, with newspaper announcements flashing up, and photos of film stars. It doesn’t make much sense but gives a hint of what’s to come. The story involves an American film star who has been romantically linked to other actors. But she is now engaged to be married to a British peer. 

Julie Andrews is one of the main characters in this 2000 film, which is set fifty or so years earlier. She is perfectly typecast as the widowed marchioness, Felicity Marshwood. We meet her discussing her son’s engagement with her maid and close companion whom she calls Moxie (Sophie Thompson). Neither is happy about him falling in love with someone unknown, who is not in their circles. And the engagement has happened far too rapidly for their tastes.

Julie Andrews is a great actress, but as she grew older she almost always seemed to play exactly the same kind of person. It was impossible to forget who she was, while we were watching the film. And at times Felicity reminded me forcibly of the grandmother in ‘The Princess Diaries’. Not that it mattered at all. 

The other family resident of the stately home is Felicity’s nephew Peter, played to perfection by Colin Firth. Again, the character was very much in keeping with many of the actor’s other roles, and we couldn’t forget who he was. But he and Julie Andrews have excellent screen chemistry in this film, and some of the humour comes from Peter’s rather sarcastic asides, given with excellent timing. 

The other famous actor in a typecast role is Stephen Fry as the butler Crestwell. Although rather older, he’s very similar to Jeeves, in the brilliant TV adaptations of PG Wodehouse’s iconic series. Perhaps he was specifically chosen for the role due to the similarity. 

Felicity’s son Nigel (Edward Atterton) arrives in a sports car with the flashy Miranda (Jeanne Triplehorne) who is welcomed, but rather clearly not popular. She admires the stately home, but isn’t entirely comfortable in it. Her agent - and former boyfriend - Don (William Baldwin) follows her and tries to persuade her to return to the United States with him to continue her career. He’s rather sleazy but although she resists, it’s evident that he’s not going to take ‘no’ for an answer…

There’s one extra subplot which relies on a huge coincidence but works well all the same. Felicity’s maid Moxie doesn’t feel that she can remain in the same household with Miranda visiting. When she eventually explains her reasoning, Felicity, Peter and Crestwell come up with a story to make her look different, and behave like a close family friend. It’s all a bit ridiculous but Moxie does this very well, and there’s a lot of humour in the interactions that take place over dinner. There’s also some poignancy and anger which arise later. 

The story is partly about class consciousness and snobbishness, and partly about some of the differences between American and British culture. It’s dated, as one would expect of a Coward story, set in the 1950s, but the people seem believable for the era, and the story, if somewhat ridiculous, works well as a film. We chuckled at one scene and smiled several times as it’s extremely well made. 

The outcome is somewhat predictable, with a nice little cameo scene at the end as the family go into church on a Sunday morning. We were a bit caught between eye-rolling at the snobbery and amusement at the way it was made. We didn't think it 'outstandingly funny' as the DVD case suggested, nor did we roar with laughter. But overall, I liked it very much.  

Recommended if you like this kind of film. 

The rating is PG which reflects the refreshing lack of bad language, nudity and scenes of intimacy.  But it's unlikely to be of interest to anyone under the age of at least fifteen. 

Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews

Pillow Talk (Doris Day, Rock Hudson)

(Amazon UK link)

A few months ago we were offered first refusal on a large number of DVDs belonging to a friend, who was downsizing. Most of them were classics. We accepted about twenty, thinking they would be interesting to watch even though we had never heard of most of them. The one we decided to watch last night was ‘Pillow Talk’, a film from 1959 although it was in colour. 

Doris Day stars as Jan, an independent young woman who works as an interior designer in New York. She lives in an apartment where she’s quite comfortable. Except for one problem... Her telephone is on a ‘party line’ with a man called Brad Allen, who is a serial womaniser. A tad ironic, perhaps, that Brad is played by Rock Hudson, whom I had not heard of until the 1980s when he died.

Jan needs her phone for business calls, but every time she picks it up, she hears Brad flirting with another woman. He works as a songwriter, and tells each woman that she is his inspiration. Jan becomes more and more annoyed, even going to the phone company to see if they can do something about it.

What she doesn’t know is that Brad is close friends with Jonathan (Tony Randall), one of her clients. Jonathan is very keen on Jan, and keeps trying to persuade her that she should marry him. He really doesn’t want Brad to meet Jan due to his reputation for attracting every personable woman around…

When Brad spots Jan with Jonathan, he is very drawn to her. So when he meets her again he adopts a completely different persona, that of a country hick from Texas who always behaves like a gentleman. Rock Hudson does this switch extremely well, and there’s plenty of humour in the way he gently woos Jan…

Of course there’s the inevitable discovery of his treachery, and an eventual happy (if rather rapid) conclusion after she has taken unusual revenge. But it’s a good story, light-hearted and somewhat ridiculous but the ‘comedy of errors’ situation is well done. There are even extra amusing scenes when Brad takes refuge in places where he shouldn’t have been. And there are also humorous incidents involving Jan’s maid Alma (Thelma Ritter) who is outspoken, and has a drinking problem. We didn’t laugh aloud, but we both smiled several times. 

As a light-hearted evening’s viewing, it worked well. The acting is, of course, American 1950s style, rather caricatured and unrealistic. But that didn’t matter. We didn’t have any trouble with the accents, as I sometimes do with American films, but then the New York accent is quite mild. 

There are several songs in the film, but it’s not a musical. Nobody stops the action to break out into singing and dancing. Instead some of the songs are those written by Brad, and some are sung in a bar or elsewhere. They add to the film in a positive way, I thought. 

I was a little surprised that the rating for this film is PG. Although there’s no nudity or anything overt, there are a lot of innuendoes and implications. The main story, after all, involves Brad attempting to get Jan into bed without her knowing who he is. There’s also an unpleasant scene where a young man tries repeatedly to assault her in a car, and another where, due to a misunderstanding, another character is punched in the face. 

It’s not something I would want to show to children or teens, but then I can’t imagine that this would be of the slightest interest to anyone under the age of at least fifteen or sixteen. 

Recommended if you like rather risqué lightweight1950s American comedies.

Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews

Emma mini-series (Romola Garai)

(Amazon UK link)

I have mentioned to various people that I liked the 1990s film version of Jane Austen’s Emma a great deal more than I liked the book. But I had no idea that there was another version of Emma made for the screen: a TV mini-series, made by the BBC in 2009. Some relatives gave it to me for my birthday a few months ago, and we decided to start watching it last week. As the entire thing is almost four hours long - with two DVDs in the box - we agreed to watch it on two separate evenings. 

The series starts with a bit of background in Emma’s life. Whereas the book only touches on it lightly, we see Emma as a baby, then a toddler. Her mother died when she was young and her father - the late Michael Gambon is wonderful in the role - becomes very over-protective of his two daughters. By contrast, two other orphaned motherless children in the neighbourhood, Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill, are sent away to live with relatives. 

Isabella and Emma grow up in the large stately home known as Hartfield, where they lack nothing. Their governess, Anne Taylor (Jodhi May), lives with them and is treated more like a family member than a servant. In the book, she has just got married when the story opens; Isabella is already married to a family friend called John Knightley. In this mini-series, we see Emma predicting that Isabella and John will fall in love. We then see her introducing Anne to another family friend, Mr Weston, certain they are right for each other. 

Emma is decidedly self-centred and strong-willed, but at twenty-one she’s very good at running the household and is devoted to her hypochondriac father. And although she doesn’t want to get married herself, she becomes convinced that she’s a natural matchmaker. Romola Garai is perfect in the role, in my opinion. She’s lively, and outgoing, but she can be outspoken. That she might sometimes be wrong, however, has not occurred to her.

Emma decides to make friends with a young woman called Harriet who attends a local school for orphans. It’s rumoured that Harriet is the illegitimate offspring of a nobleman, and Emma is modern enough to feel that Harriet should not be punished for her parents’ behaviour. Harriet is in love with a local farmer, but Emma feels that she’s made for higher things… in particular, the new and rather handsome clergyman, Mr Elton. 

Apparently Jane Austen deliberately made Emma somewhat dislikable to her readers, and in a sense this mini-series veers away from that. Despite her faults, Emma has a great deal of charm and vivacity, and she can be very generous. Her neighbour Mr Knightley (brother of Isabella’s husband) has been her mentor for many years. He regularly criticises Emma for things she has done wrong or thoughtlessly, and on the whole she takes it well. Mr Knightley is played to perfection by Johnny Lee Miller. 

It’s a bit of a comedy of misunderstandings; it’s also something of a coming-of-age story for Emma. She slowly becomes aware that she is fallible, and that sometimes people need to choose their own marriage partners. Love, she discovers, can’t be turned off and on, and needs to find its own path. She finds it hard to accept other people’s intuitions or instincts, convinced that she understands better than anyone. 

I had wondered how the book, condensed into 90 minutes for the film, could be expanded to fill four full episodes of nearly an hour each. But it didn’t drag at all. I very much liked the extra parts at the beginning, showing Emma growing up. They were totally in keeping with the spirit of the book. There are one or two places where I felt that a shot of people smiling or laughing was perhaps a little too long, but it didn’t matter. There’s a ball, and a picnic, both of which are given a good amount of time: not so little that they seem rushed, but not so much that they drag out. 

There’s some beautiful scenery, and many shots of people walking. There are a few extra scenes too, such as a snow-fight which I don’t recall from the book, which don’t feel at all out of place. I don’t recall the book in detail as it’s a while since I read it, but nothing struck me as out of place, and I couldn’t remember anything that was left out. It’s all set firmly in the correct era, the early part of the 19th century when it was written. The details of the sets and the costumes are superb - there are ‘extras’ on the DVDs giving insights into both. 

The language, too, is that of Jane Austen. And yet.. the whole has an oddly up-to-date feeling to it, at the same time. Perhaps it’s that human nature really doesn’t change. Emma sometimes looks like a 21st century person in 19th century dress, as do others of the cast; but I think this was probably deliberate on the part of the series producers. Jane Austen, after all, did not write ‘historical’ fiction. She wrote contemporary novels, based on people she knew and situations that would have felt quite ordinary to her. Her characters are slightly caricatured, but very much alive, and that comes over in this mini-series. 

All in all, we thought this a wonderful adaptation of ‘Emma’, one I would recommend very highly, although Austen purists might prefer a more traditional adaptation. 

Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews