The land girls - Le ragazze di campagna

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.

Beautifully photographed in the English countryside, this odd film about three English women assigned to work on a farm during World War II provides the promise of heat but never delivers. None of the characters (perhaps the director should have focused on fewer characters to provide proper depth) nor the relationships between the characters are remotely believable. This film exhibits a dangerous trend in films today where the mentality of the 90's is transposed onto the 40's. Directors and screenwriters would be well advised to do more homework on the period in which their films take place. Further, good acting and excellent production values cannot overcome a mediocre script or lackluster direction.

Being English might have had something to do with it, but I loved this film. All the acting was outstanding and the multitude of little comic moments had me laughing much more than other 'comedies' that we get from hollywood. Although the central theme of the plot - an unlikely love affair - was a little unbelievable and forced, the gentle pace and quaint bizarre moments, and the refreshing setting made this a view again movie. Weiss character was a little ott at first but she played it beautifully with a surprising comic ability. As for the unintelligible accents, well I suggest that the American market which struggles to understand anything not US formulaic mass media, grows up.

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".

Land Girls is about a British program during World War II that trained women from all over the country to work on farms while the men were at war. Stella, Ag and Prue are three young women from different areas and different classes who go to work on an old farm in south-coastal England. But this isn't a "fish out of water" kind of film - the women adjust reasonably quickly and become part of the family. There is a the crotchety farmer, helpful farmer's wife and good looking son who plans to join the RAF. The war feels generally a bit remote - the young women can see bombing from a hilltop, but aren't in the middle of the fighting.

The movie focuses on Stella, who's engaged to a young man at a nearby naval station. Prue is the somewhat adventurous hair stylist-turned-cow milker, and Ag is a university student off to help her country. Strongly recommended for folks who enjoy realistic settings and anything about World War II home life.