Monday, June 20, 2011

Revisiting a classic movie

This weekend I got to watch (for the second time), the movie The Girl in the Café. I recall that I watched this movie for the first time shortly before Darlene dragged me by the collar to my first acting class several years ago. I was so impressed with the movie at the time that I decided to adapt one of its scenes to an exercise I had to complete in my acting class.

The movie was even better the second time around, especially since I had forgotten some of the details regarding the plot points in the story. This is one of the advantages of aging by the way, if you wait long enough, you get to watch movies again as if for the very first time. [Grin] This movie was nominated for 2 Golden Globes and I'm not surprised. Bill Nighy, who is a lovable expert at low status characters under normal circumstances, absolutely rips your heart out in this movie as Lawrence, the capable, but socially inept, self-effacing workaholic bureaucrat who works at the highest levels of British economic politics. Kelly Macdonald is also warm and unassuming as Gina, the Scottish girl Lawrence meets in the café near his work. She ends up changing his life in ways I could only let the movie reveal. Sorry - no spoilers.

This is a smart movie where nobody dies (at least not on-screen) and sans car chases or guns blazing. For those of you who enjoy an actor who knows how to play status well and can frown with his elbows, I give this movie a huge endorsement.

"Some of the dullest people in the world are in this room. There are gold medallists in the Boredom Olympics here. Anything you say will be more interesting than anything they've ever said." ~Lawrence

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