Ladies In Lavender (DVD)

I'm having a bit of a season of watching Judi Dench films at the moment. I think she is one of the best British actresses around and I can't think of any film she has made that I have not enjoyed her performance. The latest film I have watched her in is Ladies in Lavender made in 2004, which is a very gentle moving film. I didn't really know anything about the film before I watched it but I was soon caught up in the story. It is set in the 1930s and is about two elderly sisters who share a cottage situated on the Cornish coast. One day, after a particularly bad storm, they notice a body washed up on the beach. The young man is barely alive, but with the help ...  Read the complete review

Set in Cornwall shortly before the outbreak of WWII, two sisters, Ursula and Janet happen upon a Polish man washed up on a beach. How he got there is anyone’s guess and we never find out. As we watch him being nursed back to health we, and the characters, are taken on a journey of discovery. The element that sets this film apart from many others however is the music. Our Polish traveller has a talent that one can only marvel at and it is this which leads me to suggest that this film is a cross between the period drama that is the English Patient and the musical tale of The Piano. Directed by Charles Dance the film has a lot to commend it. It is ...  Read the complete review

Ladies in Lavender is a charming film set in Cornwall in an idyllic town, shortly before WWII broke out. The elderly Widdington sisters, Ursula (strangely non-British name?!?) and Janet lead a sedate life, though Ursula has a zest for life that remains undiminished by the years. When a Polish man is found on the beach one day, presumably from a shipwreck though no wreckage is ever found, it stirs forgotten emotions in Ursula as they nurse him back to health. This begins to cause friction between the two sisters, and when Andrea (the Polish guy) exhibits a special talent, even more tension is caused by the interest of German painter Olga, who is ostensibly just on holiday ...  Read the complete review

I watched this recently with my step mum as it was part of her mothers day present, the DVD not the getting to watch it with me and by the end we both had a tear in our eye. The film is set in the years between the wars and focuses on two elderly sisters who live together in Cornwall. They live right on the coast and one day they discover the body of a young man washed up on shore after a violent storm. He turns out to be Polish and speaks no English and he is also a talented musician however his prescence begins to stir up concerns in the village during a time when paranoa was starting to sweep the country with regards to foreigners particularly in isolated ...  Read the complete review