Postwar jaunt that soothes the soul
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society 12A cert, 124 min
Dir Mike Newell
Starring Lily James, Michiel Huisman, Glen Powell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Tom Courtenay, Penelope Wilton, Katherine Parkinson, Matthew Goode
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society absolutely flies past: by the time you’ve committed the title to memory, it’s almost finished. On paper, it’s a bit of a head-scratching melange: equal parts comedy, travelogue and whodunit, rigged around wartime flashbacks and a love triangle. It’s the kind of story that these days would almost always end up as a TV miniseries, either screened across four Sunday evenings on the BBC or constantly plugged beneath the words “Because you watched The Crown” on Netflix. But thank goodness this one hasn’t: this well-crafted escapism deserves to be enjoyed in a deluxe setting.
Mike Newell’s adaptation of Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’s epistolary novel is a film you don’t spend time with so much as spend time in: every location is like a mini-break for the soul, every costume and piece of set-dressing gorgeous.
Lily James leads the ensemble cast as Juliet Ashton, a London-based author who seizes an opportunity to speak at a book group on Guernsey as a way to wriggle out of a promotional tour for her latest work – a volume of Pooterish skits on wartime life that sells well but doesn’t reflect who she is. The year is 1946, and the bright new coats of paint on every other front door speak to a common appetite for fresh starts. But as soon becomes evident, some of the past few years’ secrets have not been buried as deeply as their keepers might like.
Juliet’s invitation was extended by Dawsey Adams, a member of the island’s Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which was founded in 1941 after an illicit hog roast, when he and some friends were stopped by the occupying Nazis and had to cook up an excuse, and then a name, on the spot. What began as a ruse soon became a regular pastime, with postmaster Eben (Tom Courtenay) and his grandson Eli (Kit Connor), gin maker Isola (Katherine Parkinson) and mother hen Amelia (Penelope Wilton) coming together for a momentary escape from the German boots tramping the cobbles outside. Yet when Juliet joins them, there is a question mark hanging over the whereabouts of Elizabeth Mckenna (Jessica Brown Findlay), the group’s one-time keystone whose absence no one seems keen to discuss.
Juliet smells a story, but also finds herself drawn to the group as kindred book-lovers – not least of all Dawsey. Played by the Game of Thrones actor Michiel Huisman, Dawsey is less of a conventional heart-throb than a kind of stealth hunk, whose sex appeal grows so gradually it virtually qualifies as a plot twist. He’s a welcome counterpoint to Juliet’s fiancé Reynolds (Glen Powell), a flash American GI stationed in London, who marks her departure for Guernsey by putting a diamond on her finger the size of a Malteser.
Her self-consciousness at having to lug around this preposterous sparkler is beautifully played by James, whose rosy, quizzical star turn here feels like the obvious next point on the smooth career curve that has taken her from Downton Abbey to Darkest Hour (next stop, young Meryl in Mamma Mia! 2).
But Newell excels as a director of well-picked ensembles. Here again, he gives each of his cast members just enough room to stretch. What’s more, the book group members are a novel bunch. Dawsey could be a cousin of Far From the Madding Crowd’s Gabriel Oak, while there’s more than a touch of Elizabeth Bennet about Juliet.
This kind of magpie detail saves the film’s professed love of the written word from coming off as glib or trite, just as its story-within-a-story – the island’s Nazi occupation – brings a tug or two of gravity to the postwar romantic intrigue. It is a confection in every sense, but rich with natural sweetness.