Movie of the Week: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

[jacey]

A sweet film with a mystery and a romance. In the aftermath of World War Two a successful writer, Juliet Ashton (Lily James), visits Guernsey, which is still reeling from the effects of having been occupied by Germans. She's there to write about the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society for an article she's committed to, but on meeting the society's members she realises there's a mystery that no one is willing to talk about. She's corresponded with farmer Dawsey Adams (Michael Huisman) who turns out to be not what she expected at all. Juliet nibbles away at the mystery (what happened to Elizabeth McKenna?) until all is revealed. In the meantime she and Dawsey develop a relationship, which is somewhat unfortunate, since Juliet is engaged to (pushy) American Mark Reynolds. It's probably no great spoiler if I say it all works out in the end (after all, it's that sort of film). It's not just Farmer Dawsey who draws Juliet in,  the rest of the cast is very engaging, too. Kudos to Penelope Wilton and Tom Courtenay for their excellent contribution.

Comments

[gorgeousgary]

My book club at work read the book last year; we all enjoyed it. Will have to look for the movie once it crosses the pond.

[jacey]

It's a very gentle movie, but quite a nice change of pace from Avengers: Infinity war (which was also good, but in a different way).

[watervole]

I'm just reading the book at the moment. I suspect they played around with the timeline to make it work better as a movie as most of what happened to Elizabeth is being revealed in letters as they all write to one another.

[jacey]

That often happens, doesn't it? What works in book form doesn't work on screen.