It’s set in 1946 and takes the form of an exchange of letters between a writer (Juliet Ashton, played by Lily James - and very lovely she looked too) in London and a Guernsey pig farmer (Dawsey Adams, played by Michiel Huisman) – the latter being a member of the GL+PPS book club. In his letters Adams conveys some of the struggles the islanders suffered during the German occupation… and, in due course, Ashton decides to visit the book club in Guernsey to learn more of their stories.
As I suspected, I didn’t enjoy the film anything like as much as I’d enjoyed the book.
The film was too sugar-coated for my taste (and the same applied to the sections which included musical accompaniment – which was all a little too soft and ‘twinkly’!).
It all looked rather beautiful and cosy – but just a little too charming, if you know what I mean. The Guernsey Tourist Board will no doubt be delighted – even if, apparently, much of it was filmed in Devon and Cornwall (not to mention Bristol harbourside!). The film script invented lots of stuff that wasn’t in the book and I also thought Michiel Huisman seemed a strange choice for the Dawsey character (Peter Bradshaw’s review in The Guardian describes him thus: “one of the handsomest pig-farmers in the world, a stubbled exquisite”!).
But, hey, having said all that, I found it a perfectly enjoyable, feel-good film – just right for a rainy Sunday afternoon perhaps, when you’ve nothing better to do?
Photo: Film poster with Bristol’s very own ‘Balmoral’ ship in the background.
PS: I’d forgotten my previous experiences of Cinema de Lux – a) over half an hour of adverts and previews before the film(!) and b) just how ridiculously loud the sound system was (I would go as far as to describe it as ‘unbearable’!).
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