The Queen of Sheba's Pearls

Disney without the attention to detail.

Very choppy direction ruins a reasonably decent plot and, at times, good acting.

The feeling that you are watching a 90 minute cigarette commercial doesn't exactly heighten the experience.

Nutley has, for reasons unknown, a relatively solid fan base - but surely their patience must be stretched close to breaking point with this performance.

Colin Nutley, pretty famous Englishman who have watched the Swedish way of life and put it on the screen for about 20 years, has now done an English version of his first big hit movie Änglagård (1992). His in real life wife Helena Bergström plays the lead (as usual!), and the acting is through the whole cast are quite good. But the story is not engaging and for many moments quite boring. Nutley spreads out the story in a couple of treads, that he doesn't really tie together in the end. Jens Fischers cinematography is what's great about this movie, and it is sometimes breathtaking. But this movie i a big step forward for Nutley after the worthless Liza Marklund-movies.

I saw this film on DVD in Australia. The cover of the DVD said it was in the tradition of 'The Remains of the Day" & this was not misleading. It was visually enjoyable & authentic in it's depiction of the period in which it was set. I enjoyed all the performances. I admit the beginning was a bit slow with some extended scenery shots & for just a few minutes I was concerned I might not get into it but once the story really got going I didn't look back. It had a good mix of pathos & humour throughout & characters from young children to the elderly so there is something for everyone! I saw Brokeback Mountain on the same weekend & I enjoyed this film more!

I watched this film on DVD and loved it. Although there are a few comic touches, the prevailing mood is of melancholy reminiscence, the recurring themes, loss and bereavement. Visually it is magnificent, capturing the English countryside to perfection. Everything is very quiet and understated, also in a very English way. The acting is first-rate, and I particularly admired the performances of Rollo Weeks, a sixteen-year-old grieving for his mother, and Simon Paisley Day, who has a small but chilling role as his sententious and sadistic headmaster. This film deserves to be better known.

For a while I was more interested in how the presence of such an outstanding Irish figure as Lorcan Cranitch in the family was going to be explained. When given it made sense. In the meantime the mystery of how Jack's aunt could pop up from nowhere and somehow have been overlooked by her mother kept us glued to the screen. There was however one major gaffe at the beginning of the film. When Jack is boarding the train to take him to his grandmother, the fact that it is wartime Britain is illustrated by not only Jack, but a number of others on the platform, all carrying the general issue cardboard gas mask boxes strung from their shoulders. This would place the scene in either 1939 or even perhaps the end of 1940, since those boxes soon dropped to pieces, and a large variety of other containers were used and came into fashion. I remember having mine replaced with a chocolate coloured round tin cannister. Ladies were able to buy containers resembling handbags, but round at the bottom, and wide and flat at the top, with matching straps. It was quite a blow when the fact that Jack's mother had died eight years before the King, was revealed. I was on embarkation leave when the King died in February 1952 so remember the time well. Eight years earlier put the death of Jack's mother around the beginning of 1944. At that time I doubt whether a single person still carried a gas-mask, never mind a brand new cardboard box.