Lady Keyes: Celle qui en savait trop

I first came across the captivating young British actress Romola Garai in the 2004 movie "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights". Since then, most of her work has been for television, but she was back on the large screen in the 2009 film "Glorious 39". The '39' refers to 1939 when Britain was on the edge of war with Germany. 'Glorious' relates to both the nature of that year's summer and the affectionate name for Garai's character Anne, the adopted daughter of the aristocratic Keyes family which is headed by an influential Conservative Member of Parliament who is appalled by the notion of the country going to war for the second time in only a couple of decades.

Written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff as a kind of Hitchcockian thriller, this is a work replete with well-known British character actors spanning the age range from Christopher Lee & Julie Christie through Bill Nighy & Jeremy Northam to David Tennant & Eddie Redmayne. With so much talent available, one has a right to expect more than is actually delivered. The plotting is rather silly and often slow and the characterisation somewhat stilted, while the ending is most unsatisfactory. The locations - mostly in Norfolk - are fine though.

Summer 1939, and as much of Britain prepares for war, a shady cabal of aristocrats and Government officials plots to mollify Hitler and secure a quick, painless peace. When Anne Keyes (Romola Garai), the adopted daughter of a wealthy family, stumbles across the conspiracy, she finds her life under threat - as one by one her allies turn out to be traitors, or turn up dead. In his first feature for 10 years, writer-director Stephen Poliakoff deals with some weighty themes - fascism, adoption, familial loyalty - while alighting on fascinating aspects of the readying for war, such as pets being killed and heaped onto pyres. "It's like a vision of hell, isn't it?" asks Anne's father (Bill Nighy). "Animals going onto a fire in a quiet English summer." Despite its depth, though, Glorious 39 is really an old-fashioned thriller: engrossing and atmospheric, with a gnawing, ever-present sense of menace and some mightily effective set pieces.

The film does have its faults, floundering in the final 15 and closing with an atrocious scene that serves no purpose, beyond fulfilling a perceived desire for a happy ending and satiating Poliakoff's need to hammer the audience over the head with poorly-conceived pseudo-irony. In common with his 1991 film Close My Eyes, it also has moments of stiltedness and artificiality that snap you out of the story. But for all that, I don't understand the hammering it's been given by most critics. Its Hitchcockian elements - the stomach-tightening tension piquing during a slew of well thought-out suspense scenes - are marvellously handled, and the film is also notable for Garai's expressive, layered turn, which catches the eye in a cast that includes Nighy, Julie Christie, Jeremy Northam, David Tennant and Jenny Agutter. And Christopher Lee, but I don't like him.

I enjoyed this movie because it took a turn I wasn't expecting when the family started acting strangely. I didn't start to think about the plot holes till it was over--I kept thinking it would all come clear. But I gotta admit it didn't make sense.

(1) Anne was adopted. Then we learn she was a gypsy. The English have always been so class conscious that an upper class person hardly speaks to anyone except those in their circle, so I find it impossible to believe they would take a Roma child into their family as a full member.

(2) Before the war started, England was divided on their opinion of going to war. This is easily documented in any history book about WW 11. Some people wanted the war, some people didn't, some were sympathetic to Hitler (The Duke and Duchess of Windsor), and some just wanted him to go away.

(3) At that time, (like now) the opinions of young women were regarded lightly. What they had to say did not account for much. Especially in politics, they were ignored.

In view of (1) (2)and (3), please someone tell me why the Keyes family went to so much trouble, murder, lies, deception, cruelty to animals, and darn near killing Anne, just because she might hold a different opinion on the war. When her father was explaining it all to her, all he could come up with was she was a Roma (gypsy) and didn't fall in with the families' opinion of the war. It's pretty darn strange and puzzling to me. What did I miss? She wasn't political at all till they started their odd behavior.

Stephen Polliakoff's work has shown some consistent concerns: two of them are a nostalgic view of the aristocratic past, and an interest in the aftermath of Nazism. These two come together in 'Glorious 39', which one may describe as a '39 Steps' kind of thriller; and in its middle portion, it's briefly gripping, albeit in a style that seems a deliberate pastiche of an earlier style of film. But overall, it's a rum beast, almost a parody of Polliakoff's earlier work. There are lines of incongruous or anachronistic dialogue, and much of the acting is exceedingly flat. Polliakof often casts Bill Nighy, and seems to order him to underact; in my opinion, all of Nighy's performances for this director are awful. The child acting is also exceedingly wooden. Ramola Garai in the lead role is OK, but she really gets almost no help; yet from the overall feel of the piece, it's hard to avoid concluding that this is intentional. The plot is incoherent and hackneyed: the good guys all want to fight the Nazis, the nasty people don't; even the use of an adopted child as the lead character seems to be a cheap way of having a cake and eating it, as it allows the director to revel in the aristocratic excess while simultaneously suggesting there was something terrible about it. The concluding scene, meanwhile, makes something out of nothing, a crescendo of music hiding the fact that there's no real drama in the ending. It's a shame, as for a number of years, Polliakoff's work was consistently interesting; but this is a mess.

After finding secret pro-appeasement (for the Nazis) recordings Anne (Garai) becomes involved in a secret, violent conspiracy, set in England in 1939. After one of her friends who speaks out against Hitler is found dead, Anne begins to dig deeper into the reasons for his death. This is a very interesting movie. It is both compelling and slow moving. It is tense but it drags in spots. It kept me watching but my mind did wander a bit. This is overall a good movie but you need to be in the mood for it. You really feel for Anne and the way her life begins to fall apart. I am a fan of historical movies so I really liked that aspect of it. This movie had the feel of a made-for-TV movie, although it would have been an HBO movie with the quality of it. I recommend this but again, it's not for everyone, and you need to be in the mood to watch a movie like this one. I give it a B-.

Would I watch again? - Probably not