The Camomile Lawn
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Movie Reviews of The Camomile Lawn
Movie Review: WHO THREW THAT CHAIR ONTO THE SET?
Summary: 2 Stars
I watched this when it came out, and have returned to it years later.
And how different it seems in retrospect.
The acting is wooden - it's as if someone threw a chair onto the set. There are some good performances but in the main the order of the day is clipped upper class Englishness with warmth and humanity drained away. All very sterile.
The writing and dialogue is at times painful, stilted and unreal, with the delivery of lines from the actors forced and almost alien.
Some other strange stuff too: the uncle liked little girls (in a sexual way)and this was shrugged off as mild eccentricity. How times have changed since the 1990s !
What is good about this series is the historical references and the depiction and sense of the war years.
Well worth watching but not the greatest piece of drama.
Movie Review: Very Mediocre
Summary: 2 Stars
I wanted to watch this movie mainly because of Jennifer Ehle. Ms. Ehle played Elizabeth Bennett is the very lovely-made version of Pride and Prejudice. However, I did not like her character or her blonde hair. The story, mostly told in flashback, was poorly done and somewhat confusing. I was very glad when the film ended.Movie Review: This was on Television?
Summary: 1 Stars
I inititally wanted to watch this for one main reason -- I'm a huge fan of Felicity Kendal, and the chance to see her in something with her former "Good Neighbors" co-star Paul Eddington was especially intriguing. And, reading the product description it looked fairly interesting. A period drama set during WWII. Just my cup of tea. Alas, it was not interesting at all. (To paraphrase Sophy, [who was describing her feelings about having her uncle put his hands up her skirt "Not awful. Just boring.")
The mini-series was, apparently, based on a 'best-selling novel', a 'best-seller' that was, equally apparently, of the 'trashy' variety, because it turned out to be a tale of a group of people who are completely wrapped up in sex. Every scene involves characters having sex, talking about having sex, talking about why they won't have sex, and planning to have sex.
So [spoilers ahead] ... Helena is married to Richard, but has a long-standing affair with Max ... who manages to ALSO have sex, at some point, with every other female charcter. Richard has an equally long standing affair with Max's wife, while at the same time molesting little children. Bleached blonde Calpyso wants to marry for money,(AND is 'saving herself for marriage') and quickly finds herself a Scottish laird to oblige her. (And she reminds the other charactesr, and us, at least 50 times that she married him ONLY for his money.) Having disposed of her virginity, she goes on to bed every other man she can find. Beautiful brunette Polly is fitted with a diaphragm (on camera) and goes on to put it to excellent use.In between several other love affairs, she discovers the joys of a menage with a pair of identical twins. Little Sophie never wears knickers when it's hot outside, has a mad panic when flashed by a strange man on the path, but just finds it 'boring' when Uncle Richard puts his hand up her skirt.
And, to my amazement, since there was no mention of it on either the Amazon.com description OR the DVD packaging, this is all made all the more 'realistic' by repeated (mostly gratuitous) scenes of full-frontal female nudity. (Creative camera angles obscure the men's naughy bits, but the ladies [Felicity Kendal excepted] are viewed in all their glory.)
This would have been tolerable if it had all be accompanied by a remotely interesting plot, or well-defined characterization, but there is no plot, and we don't really learn much of anything about anyone. Oh, and they neglected to mention (in the modern parts) WHY Helena suddenly took to drinking, why everyone hates Paulie so much, and why even a non-practicing Jew would be buried with a Christian funeral rite in a Christian church and church-yard.
On the positive side (searching for something good to say), the Cornish scenery is lovely, and it IS quite well acted, for the most part.
One more negative -- completely bare-bones DVDs. No extras of any kind, no subtitles, and no tv-based closed captioning.