REVIEWED - LADIES IN LAVENDER: Actor Charles Dance's harmless directing début, rich in nice scenery, strong performances and crisp shots of overhanging boom mics, comes across as the sort of polite drama you might have seen in the 1950s West End, writes Donald Clarke
At any moment you half expect Maggie Smith or Judi Dench to pull aside a shutter and say something like "Ooo! The nights are drawing in".
The two faultless troupers play a couple of sisters in 1930s Cornwall whose peaceful isolation is disturbed when a young Polish man (Daniel Brühl from Good Bye, Lenin!) washes up on the beach beneath their cottage. Like a benign version of Don Siegel's The Beguiled (the one where injured soldier Clint Eastwood recuperates in a Southern finishing school), Ladies in Lavender sees the patient progress from being a figure of suspicion to a cherished friend to the object of inappropriate sexual longings.
It transpires that the lad is an accomplished violinist, and his tuneful noodlings attract the attentions of a visiting painter (Natascha McElhone). Obeying urges to which they can't quite admit, the sisters conspire to keep the two young people apart.
Despite some sinister overtones, this remains an overly twee, unacceptably sentimental business. Still, it is a pleasure to watch Dench prickle while Smith channels the spirit of Dame Edith Evans, and Miriam Margolyes, who spends much of the film buying pilchards, is delightful as their aggressive servant.
Needless to say, the uneasy relationship between the old ladies and the young man cannot last forever. As the film moves forward intimations of mortality announce themselves. "Ooo! The nights are drawing in," Dame Judi muses.
