Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13445 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-07-25
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 90 minutes

Synopsis
Lawrence (Bill Nighy) works for the Chancellor of the Exchequer and barely has time to lace his own shoes let alone conduct a relationship. Then he meets Gina (Kelly Macdonald), a pretty, instinctively reserved but highly enigmatic girl, in a London cafe. A friendship develops between the two, but both, consumed by years of loneliness are guarded.

Gina accompanies Lawrence to the G8 summit in Reykjavik where she surprises herself and shocks everyone else by challenging the conference's established agenda on global poverty. Lawrence is then forced to make an impossible decision - choose between the girl who has given him a new reason to live or the job he has devoted his life to. What will he decide and will the world leaders at the summit take notice of the girl from the cafe?

Customer Reviews

Facts about films playing in Iceland
A romantic TV film with a political background. Ouch. And Richard Curtis is doing all those Hugh Grant in always the same kinda role films... What a difference Bill Nighy made! The kind of character was a typical Richard Curtis centre of the story character, but when Hugh Grant TRIES, Bill Nighy IS, and you absolutely believe what he's like on screen. Shy, awkward, polite, one can't help but falling in love with his character again and again. So is Kelly MacDonald (and I'm sure some male viewers felt the same way about her), both actors portraying people with a real twist. The chemistry is more than forcing, the both of them couldn't have been casted any better.

The story is a very quiet one. Slow, poetical, makes you smile from time to time, not only because laughing would disturb the mood (though the „disgusting pea soup" was ace!). The fact that it'll leave you breathless is not because it's so exciting, but you'll fear to ruin something when breathing too loudly. All in all it's one of the most tender and beautiful love stories of our time.

The political part? A fairy tale. A story one wishes to be true. Negative people might call it unrealistic and ridiculous, but this film is a dream, so that's alright. Still it's fiction and not a documentary. But it'll make you think for sure. And that's more than you can say about some ‚''political'' films.

Amazingly moving
Delivers an important message that has failed to reach billions simply and eloquently alongside a beautiful and honest love story. Perhaps one of the greatest movies I've ever seen. This film has it's critics - it's not glossy, it's by no means over the top. If your looking for a hollywood film, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a film that goes back to the basics of humanity, which rids every human being of any inequality, then you have found it. Personally, I'll be sharing this film with all of my friends. I reccomend everyone watch it at least once - even if you are well aware of the problems in Africa, even if you think there's nothing that can be done about the problems in Africa. It's a pertinent reminder in the form of a moving, touching and entertaining dialectic released at precisely the right time.

Fine effort, but over-politicised?
At least some of the raw materials for a Curtis hit comedy are present and correct, though he never lets you forget the fact that this dramatic piece was filmed for the BBC's African series. In fact, the viewer is soundly beaten over the head with endless statistics about African poverty, which are important for us to know and act upon, but detract from this as an individual comedy-drama. They are important to understand the G8 symposium, but a little toning down would not have lessened their significance but might have allowed the two characters to develop a more rounded relationship.

And here is the key point - the whole relationship between Bill Nighy and Kelly MacDonald is deliberately eliptical and enigmatic, but somehow fails to pass the logic test. Something about it seems so utterly improbable and naive that it could only have been staged in a play such as this. The laughs are for the most part gentle, but become increasingly embittered as the doomed British mission to cancel debt is overtaken by political game playing.

Then there are the characters, who suffer slightly from being pawns on the Curtis chessboard. Great cast too, with actors such as Ken Stott among the supporting players (as the Chancellor of the Exchequer.) As for Bill, not the usual Nighy performance, this one. He reaches into his repertoir for a motley assortment of stammers, tics and twitches as a painfully shy civil servant harbouring in his minimalist Rekyavik hotel room MacDonald's eponymous and lovely girl from the cafe, who in turn harbours a secret. MacDonald wins the acting spurs, if only because Bill looks more like a gibbering wreck than a senior Treasury official. She is serene, but hints beautifully at a troubled interior - a finely graded performance topped by a passionate speech at the G8 dinner.

Perhaps I'm being a little harsh, so 4 stars is probably a fair reflection, but I can't help feeling this is slightly uncomfortable territory that could be depoliticised for greater effect.