The Land Girls

Stella (Catherine McCormack), Prue (Anna Friel) and Ag (Rachel Weisz) play three "land girls", volunteers to carry on the agricultural work of the men. On the farm they find love, conflict, friendship and cows. The film is more of a relationship drama of those left behind than an account of the second world war.

That said it is an interesting piece - not only is it different to have a WW2 film from a British point-of-view but also from a woman's point of view. It is interesting to see how those left behind acted with their lives and their war efforts - how close to the truth this account is, anyone's guess, it's a bit unrealistic because so many girl's experiences are crammed into the story of these three. The story is good regardless with the tangled relationships creating the glut of the plot, however the many tangled love stories do get a bit much at times but the themes of love, loss and British spirit during wartime tend to make up for it.

The performance from the lead trio are mixed, Weisz is a bit stereotyped as an upper-class woman ("rotter", "jolly good" etc) but gets better as her character develops. Friel is good as Prue who starts as the roughest of the group but is touched by the events in her life. McCormack (Stella) is meant to be the core of the story with her interactions with the farmers, especially the son Joe (Steven Mackintosh), but she plays it a little over earnest for my liking. Mackintosh has the most complex role and carries it off very well with the best performance in the film.

The film's conclusion is a mix of neat, tidy endings and some more emotional moments that more realistically depict the damage that the conflict caused on the people left behind.

Overall the film is not amazing but is an interesting account of WW2 from a different point of view, some of the events are a little stereotyped and lack a realistic feel but generally the film carries the emotions that many will have experienced at the time.

I always love period dramas, especially films that focus on women and their friendships but this movie left me wondering what the point was after two hours. The three girls come to work on the farm with three totally separate personalities. You have Prue the party girl, Ag the uptight college girl, and Stella who is supposed to be the mainstay of the entire movie, the sensible one. In fact, it is Stella who narrates the movie and opens it with how she moved to the farm to help and be closer to her fiancee. So we establish that she's committed and in love with her fiancee, but within the first 30 minutes, she's falling in love with the farmhand Joe, even after saying how unspeakable he is, for no good reason. Worst of all, the reason is never explained on how she fell out of love with her fiancee and fell in love with Joe. And she seems to have no problem with Joe falling in love, or at least in bed, with everyone else around her. The movie did not make sense to me at that point. Still it is a quiet film with gorgeous English scenery and if you just want a movie that focuses on friendship, then this is the movie for you. I watched it once and that's enough.

We've seen this kind of story countless times in BBC imports or Danielle Steel novels. There's nothing new about the plot or the characters: saucy working class girl, sensible"head girl" type, and sensitive British lass with eyes for the equally sensitive farmhand. The plot isn't executed in a novel fashion, either, and we can see the rather abrupt ending coming miles away. Still, the leads are quite attractive, with Anna Friel, Catherine McCormack, and Rachel Weisz as the three main land girls of the title and Stephen Mackintosh as the sensitive Dorset lad. Enough so to make it worth a rent on a weekend when all the new releases are checked out!

Another very good example of an understated British flick being elevated by a strong cast into something worth notice. In a refreshing take on the WWII drama, the focus is on the ones who stayed behind in the war-torn south of England, like the farmers to feed the impoverished nation; the women to keep the factories running and, as in "The Land Girls", to work the land in place of the absent men.

Stephen Mackintosh, my favourite underrated Brit actor, gives the film's best performance as Joe, the farmer's son who wishes he was anywhere but home, but he's well supported by Catherine McCormack, Rachel Weisz and Anna Friel as the unfeasibly but mercifully smouldering girls of the Women's Land Army. Tom Georgeson brings gruff character as Mr Lawrence, the farmer, and check out an early Paul Bettany appearance.

Thousands of women found a new freedom in work during the War, but they were expected to return to their domestic, invisible lives once the men returned. "The Land Girls" is not cinema verité; and doesn't pretend to tackle the grimness my mother talks of in England in the 40s and 50s. But who cares? – when I want grim I'll watch a documentary; I'll settle back happily any day to watch fine actors in a quiet, 'little' film with gorgeous Dorset scenery (it really is that beautiful, visit if you can) and a tender story.

It will be too slow, too uneventful, for some. Perhaps they'd have preferred a blowsy Hollywood version, where Antonio Banderas plays the farmer's son and Renee Zellwegger the upper crust beauty (hooray for the ghost of a UK film industry). But I found it gentle and charming just as it was; and when the ingredients are so fine to begin with, that's good enough for me. If you like this sort of thing I recommend Powell & Pressburger's magical "Canterbury Tale".

Charming, nostalgic period piece, but this is basically a pretty meat and potatoes film which just about holds the attention. The three actresses in question, Catherine McCormack, Rachel Weisz and Anna Friel are all three superb stage and film actresses, rather wasted on this lightweight stuff.

The plot is predictable, the Dorset scenery is stunning. Worth seeing if you get off on 1940s period and/or English countryside of old. On to the next film.