Review Mrs Henderson

Review: Mrs Henderson Presents.

This should be a great British film. It stars two of British cinema's greatest luminaries, Dame Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins. It has a good, if not great, director in Stephen Frears. It has an interesting leading character for its' central protagonist and a wartime backdrop to add danger, threat and pathos to what might otherwise be a totally lightweight tale. Finally, it is filled with gorgeous, naked girls.

Sadly it falls into that oh-so-common category of British cinema of the near-miss.

There is a lot of truly good stuff in this film (sharp dialogue, excellent acting, interesting social comment and more). So much, in fact, that it's hard to see why it's not as good as it should be. Why, then is this a film I'd only recommend as a rainy Sunday afternoon time-waster?

Let's talk first about the central performances.

Bob Hoskins is a bad choice for Vivian Van Damme. As much as I hate to say it Mr. Hoskins has become typecast in my mind as the rough diamond. He has a broad London accent and mostly plays slightly dangerous characters. Being an actor and despising typecasting as a general principle I really shouldn't feel this way, but I do. Perhaps it's because the RP just doesn't seem entirely comfortable to Bob. I have a similar problem with RP; I can do it, but it never truly flows naturally from my lips. There are times one can get away with this, but not when sharing the screen with Judi Dench and her ilk. Sadly, he also lacks the right brand of charisma and charm for the part. Mr. Hoskins is not lacking in either characteristic, but just not in the way Van Damme needs it. Charles Dance, say, or Denis Lawson both have the smooth charm this character cries out for and does not have. Perhaps the fact that the executive producer and the actor cast are the same man helped with this piece of mis-casting?

Judi Dench, on the other hand is ideal to play the eponymous character. She has the poise, the self-assuredness and the charm Mrs. Henderson needs and one always has the sense of a wicked and mischievous wit underlying the strength and decorum in so many of her characters. She gives a fine performance, but is criminally under-used, especially considering the film is her  story. Much of her motivation or her reactions are simply skipped over. The strange episode of her turning up to be auditioned dressed as a polar bear, for instance. Certainly, she explains herself, but who arranged the audition, and how?

Kelly Reilly does an interesting job as the lead tableaux girl. She's beautiful, poised, elegant and sweet (though, somehow strangely unsexy), but we rarely get a glimpse into the  feelings engendered or effects on her life created by being the first nude performer in Britain (or in England, as the script resolutely states. Apparently, the rest of the UK were not in the war.)  A minor bitch in a café from dancers in other shows is as close as we get to see the way these girls were perceived in prim and proper 30's society. I have heard it said that the Soho of the time was not the sleazy place it is today and that families attended the shows. Maybe that is the case, but if so then why  is that scene there at all?

Indeed, this is the case with just about any indication of strong emotion or serious topic; it's just glossed over. Kelly's character falls pregnant, but before we can really see anything about how it affects her she's killed, thus relieving the film of any need to deal with the issue.

The biggest failure is the effects and, surprisingly, the cinematography. Andrew Dunn seems to have forgotten how to get a shot in focus at times. Doubtless this has to do with the efforts to integrate archive newsreel footage into the film. The result is a grainy, almost soft-focus look that merely manages to convey an impression of shoddy-amateurism and cheap production values.

Much of the problem stems from the very poorly done digital shots used. It seems to me that archive footage or photographs have been used to create many of the digital backdrops and they just look like those crappy old stock-footage shots from 60's and 70's Brit-flicks. You know, the ones that never quite merged with the rest of the film because they weren't shot on the same quality of film stock. Even shots filmed from scratch fail to look believable. The scenes on the roof of the theatre are particularly poor. There are times when looks like Bob Hoskins is a CG character or that neither he nor Judi were on the set or at the same time. Look out, too, for the shot of London in flames after a bombing raid. There is smoke rising from a fire in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen... It judders! I've seen computer games do better shots than the one of the biplane over the channel.  Oh, speaking of which; to France & back from London on one tank of petrol?

The set of Windmill Street after it has been hit by a bomb suddenly looks like a set where it looked fine before the explosion.

No doubt this will be a very popular film when the BAFTAs next come around. It won't deserve a fraction of what it will likely win.