Starring Julie Walters, Helen Mirren. Written by Tim Firth, Juliette
Towhidi. Directed by Nigel Cole. (PG) 108 min. Opens Dec 19.
Anthrax was one of my favourite bands throughout high school, so
you'd think I'd be delighted to see the thrash-metal mavens making a
cameo in Calendar Girls. Unfortunately, the band's brief
seconds in the film are symptomatic of the problem that cripples this
supposedly lighthearted tale of a women's club in Yorkshire: it's
really two films smushed into one.
The first film, roughly comprised of Calendar Girls'
first half, is what you'd expect from light British comedy. Julie
Walters and Helen Mirren play Annie and Chris, respectively, members of
an austere chapter of the Women's Institute in a small village. When
Annie's husband John (John Alderton) dies of cancer, the two decide to
create a calendar to raise some funds for the hospital's cancer wing.
Their idea blossoms gradually into the film's central story, which has
the womanly girls shedding their skivvies for the shoot. The resultant
calendar infuriates their Women's Institute superior, Cora (Linda
Bassett), ticks off some of their husbands and makes them international
celebrities.
Up to that point, it's fine: Walters plays the
damaged widow with grace, director Nigel Cole gets some lovely shots of
the green countryside, and the whole thing feels whimsical and witty --
call it The Full Matron.
Then they go to Hollywood. When the girls' fame lands them on The Tonight Show,
in commercials and poolside with Anthrax, the film's flow breaks down
entirely, and Cole starts in with stylized camera angles and cheap
moralizing that feels completely out of touch with the film's gentle
first half. If it's intentional, it's a hack job, but you get the
feeling Cole got carried away in the same way his characters are
supposed to have. His shots of the English countryside are visually
fresh and full of fondness, while his Hollywood sequences are swamped
in a borrowed, overly eager style.
The film is based on a true story, which makes its bizarre
duality all the more strange. It's impossible to believe these events
-- in this film version, anyway -- actually fit together into some
cohesive narrative. The tale is strange enough on its own; it
doesn't need a gross stylistic swerve to drive the point home. For his
purposes, Cole would've been better off bending the truth, and keeping
the girls in the countryside.