Something less than wicked this way comes
Nothing Like a Dame disappoints with its ladylike demeanour
It sounds like a winning pitch: Four celebrated English actresses, each a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, gather to discuss their long, storied careers. Apparently it’s something they do on a regular basis anyway; this time, director Roger Michell and his camera were allowed to sit in.
But after it becomes clear that Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins and Joan Plowright aren’t going to form a crime syndicate or knock over a bank, it becomes equally clear that they aren’t going to give up the goods on their colleagues, friends or lovers. And Michell isn’t pushing; we can hear his voice off camera, lobbing the softest of questions.
Even at that, there’s some fun to be had. Dench notes at one point that she’s never known an Anthony who didn’t complain about his role; I thought she meant Hopkins, Quayle, etc., but she’s actually talking about Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra, which the women agree is a better play for the female lead than the male.
Smith confesses she’s never watched Downton Abbey, though she was given a box set by the producers. Plowright gets a dig at her friend when she recalls her American agent telling her: “We’ll look for a nice little cameo that Judi Dench doesn’t have her paws on yet.” And Atkins recalls overhearing a teacher saying she wasn’t pretty enough to act, and an actor who was advising him respond: “No ... but she’s sexy.”
The archival footage is wonderful; these women have all been working since the ’50s, and we get to see them grow up in fast motion, first on stage and then on screen. But it would have been nice to have Michell give them more pointed queries than: “What was it like working with your husbands?” Plowright was married to Olivier, for heaven’s sake! And all we get back is that it was “tricky.”