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Susan Granger's review of "SAVING GRACE" (Fine Line Features)
If you loved "The Full Monty" and "Waking Ned Devine," this is the gentle summer comedy for you! Set in the Cornish city of St. Isaacs, it's about Grace Trevethan (Brenda Blethlyn), an ostensibly comfortable, conservative middle-aged widow who discovers she's, literally, penniless. Her late husband, who died while parachuting, had mortgaged their manor house to the hilt, not to mention philandering in London with another woman who had the gall to show up at his funeral. Hounded by creditors, she has no recourse but to utilize her only talent - gardening - to grow something that will make her enough money to pay off her debts. So when her Scottish handyman (played by Craig Ferguson, who co-wrote the script with Mark Crowdy) admits he's been struggling with some sickly marijuana sprigs hidden behind the vicarage, she concludes: "No light, no buds." But once Grace gets them into her greenhouse, using some hydroponics, the plants thrive. Soon she's off to the city to find! a buyer - and winds up in the clutches of a shady French drug dealer (Tcheky Karyo) who has more on his mind than her bumper crop of cannabis. In the meantime, Grace's proper garden club ladies are intrigued with her new "tea plants," sampling several with hilarious results. The psychedelic story takes an unexpectedly discordant and contrived twist at the end but, nevertheless, director Nigel Cole keeps the naughty shenanigans in high gear and you find yourselves rooting for gentle Grace to pull the hip, hemp caper of a lifetime. Like "The Full Monty" and "Waking Ned Devine," it's about ordinary people who find they must compromise their values in extraordinary circumstances. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Saving Grace" is a warm, wry, whimsical 9. It's outrageously good fun!
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