Tortoise in Love

We screened this film recently at our little wooden village hall, having already seen it once last year. This community effort with mainly amateur actors, set in a gorgeous country house, in a pretty Oxfordshire village, was very well received. The story is deliberately slow, which is indicated by the title, with mostly quintessentially English characters and a nod to "The Go Between". While the audience are aware of the plot from the outset,the gentle comedy carried our audience along joyfully. This is not a film for viewers who want car crashes and gun fights. It celebrates the small pleasures in life: music, plants, love & constancy. Made on a small budget, it is refreshing to see such a charming result. The inhabitants of Kingston Bagpuize can rightly be very proud of their work.

This film is delightful and humorous. It is about people and their Relationships. Even the most beautiful people do not have an easy time When they are in love.

The boy with the love of aircraft gives a splendid performance of a sad boy neglected by his father but supported by the estate workers.

This is a gentle film and beautifully photographed. It is homage to the goodness of people, the ingeniousness of the rural community and so many things good about England that "commercial" filmmakers neglect to tell us about.

It is a must for viewing by every rural film society and likely to Become a perennial favorite.

This is a gentle comedy of village life, with some good lines. A young man falls in love with a Polish visitor and struggles to find a way to make himself understood.

Unlike Calendar Girls and Brassed Off, the film doesn't manage to develop a dark side to act as a counterpoint to the courting couple, which means that it can seem a bit insubstantial.

The lead character is a dead ringer for Hugh Grant, and there are some good supporting performances from unknowns.

The soundtrack is good and the settings are very beautiful. I loved the cameo from the Red Arrows.

This the kind of film Richard Curtis would make on a low budget.

Tom mitchelson is "Thomas, the gardener" for a fancy estate. When the new polish governess (alice zawadzki) arrives to look after young Harry, she is quite the beauty. Thomas is quite taken with her. This one is a silly, fun love story, with lots of quirky, real people. Grandma is fun, but off her rocker. And she wants to have a festival like the good ol' days. Stand back! Lots of running gags in this one. Plain, simple fun. Fair amount of laughs. Jokes about dating. Jokes about married life. Moves pretty slowly.. will Tom ever get together with the governess? It's okay. Probably meant for a younger audience? Written and directed by Guy Browning. This is the first, and only film written by, or directed by him.

If you like Boulting Brothers, London Bridge, Two Lions, or Ealing comedies of the 1950s (and it is probably my favourite genre) then you will like this - it has much of the same sensibilities and is in the same lineage.

Other reviewers have slammed this with 1s or 2s, or overpraised it with 10s - I'm glad I didn't read them before I saw Tortoise in Love as this is, like most romantic comedies, neither exceptionally good and certainly not exceptionally bad. The film is fun and even funny - it is a very British take on love - as the hero cannot express his feelings for the Polish au-pair. All set in a world full of Thomas Hardy accents, gorgeous Georgian architecture, and rolling fields it is a very easy watch. It's all a little too fake and perfect for the real modern Britain - and it looks implausibly false in many, many ways.

But, the script was fun.

All in all, nowhere near as bad as some as suggesting - but it is a little too prissy, rather than charming, to really fly...