The Bookshop
Directed by:
Isabel CoixetScreenplay:
Isabel CoixetCinematography:
Jean-Claude LarrieuComposer:
Alfonso de VilallongaCast:
Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy, Patricia Clarkson, Honor Kneafsey, Michael Fitzgerald, Jorge Suquet, Frances Barber, Gary Piquer, Nigel O'Neill, Mary O'Driscoll (more)VOD (1)
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The Bookshop is set in 1959, Florence Green (Emily Mortimer), a free-spirited widow, puts grief behind her and risks everything to open up a bookshop – the first such shop in the sleepy seaside town of Hardborough, England. Fighting damp, cold and considerable local apathy she struggles to establish herself but soon her fortunes change for the better. By exposing the narrow-minded local townsfolk to the best literature of the day including Nabokov’s scandalising Lolita and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, she opens their eyes thereby causing a cultural awakening in a town which has not changed for centuries. Her activities bring her a kindred spirit and ally in the figure of Mr. Brundish (Bill Nighy) who is himself sick of the town’s stale atmosphere. But this mini social revolution soon brings her fierce enemies: she invites the hostility of the town’s less prosperous shopkeepers and also crosses Mrs. Gamart (Patricia Clarkson), Hardborough’s vengeful, embittered alpha female who is herself a wannabe doyenne of the local arts scene.When Florence refuses to bend to Gamart’s will, they begin a struggle not just for the bookshop but for the very heart and soul of the town. (Transmission Films)
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I like books. Maybe that's why I added that fifth star, although it deviates from the norm here. Still, I must say that this is a beautifully ordinary human drama of Florence Green, who struggles with her life until she decides to open a bookstore in a beautiful English place. But around her, people are passing by like in a classic Shakespearean drama. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, and this film is all about relationships with these people. Emily Mortimer played the melancholic lady with absolute grace, and I must say, only Bill Nighy was just a bit better, who played her male counterpart with such ease and added such noble thoughts that his character suddenly became one of the loveliest and most interesting ones he has ever played. Florence's bookstore fit me incredibly well. It is an experience for me that I can only have when I expect nothing from the movie (here in blue numbers) and then it captivates me with its mood, which personally fits me incredibly well.
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