seen on 14th May 2018
Mike Newell directs Lily James as Juliet Ashton and Michiel Huisman as Dawsey Adams, with support from Penelope Wilton, Tom Courtenay, Jessica Brown Findlay, Katherine Parkinson, Glen Powell and Matthew Goode, in this oddly-titled film based on a novel of the same name.
The Society was invented on the spur of the moment by some islanders caught out after curfew during the German occupation of the Channel Islands in World War Two, and then became a book club. After the War, one of its members, the farmer Dawsey Adams, writes to Juliet Ashton in London, having found her name and address written into a book that the society had read.
Juliet, a successful but unsatisfied young author, is involved with a wealthy American and agrees to marry him just before going to Guernsey to find out more about the Society, with a view to writing an article for the Sunday Times. But when she arrives she finds the group wary of publicity, and there turns out to be a mystery about Elizabeth, one of its founding members, who was deported during the War. The natural reserve of the islanders makes it harder for Juliet to piece together what happened, especially as her censorious landlady plainly disapproves of her connection with the book lovers.
It is all too obvious how the romantic element of the story will play out, with the quiet but decent farmer pitted against the brash rich American (even though they only meet for a few minutes of screen time). In the meantime, the revelation of Elizabeth's story proceeds in awkward jumps as Juliet gradually wins the confidence of the different members of the Society. This means that we constantly have our interest in Elizabeth's story disrupted by Juliet's difficulties in winkling it out of the locals.
Considering how unpleasant and divisive the German occupation was, our sense of it is fatally muted by its presentation - children being stoically evacuated, soldiers marching down a street, soldiers requisitioning some pigs, some silent depictions of slave labourers, almost all the nastiness occurring off-screen. The poisonous effects of collaboration and betrayal are mainly concentrated on one hapless individual now shunned by the community at large, while the landlady is a stock figure of religious bigotry. Elizabeth is presented as a free spirit, and luckily for her reputation among her friends the German she falls for is a really nice guy.
You can, I'm afraid, see the cliches overwhelming whatever summary of the plot one attempts to write. The film looks good - some lovely coastline - though it is completely unclear why, in such a pretty town as Juliet first sees, there is no accommodation (the hotel being closed), and so she is delivered by horse and cart to a remote cottage. All this does is allow more scenery; and in general the geography of the houses of the characters is very confusing. There is some attempt at period authenticity, at least visually, but the sheer grimness of Britain in the late 1940s does not bite very deep.
The film is a pleasant enough diversion, but not very much more.
