JOINT VENTURE
SAVING GRACE
Directed by Nigel Cole
Screenplay by Craig Ferguson & Mark Crowdy With Brenda Blethyn, Craig Ferguson
(Theater) R 93 min.
There's an inexhaustible mine of humor to be found in the oddball characters of small-town Britain when the material is handled right, and director Nigel Cole does just that with this virtuously naughty tale of good folks and contraband horticulture.
Grace Trevathan (Brenda Blethyn of Little Voice and Secrets & Lies) has no more than buried her husband when she finds out the bastard checked out with a mountain of debt that is now hers. Pretty soon they're carting out the furniture, and she's about to lose the grand house in Cornwall where until now she's lived without a care in the world, tending her prize-winning garden.
A way out turns up in the form of a sickly marijuana plant. Her gardener (Craig Ferguson of TV's The Drew Carey Show, who co-wrote and coproduced) asks her advice on restoring his ailing cash crop to health. Pretty soon they've got a greenhouse full of the stuff, grown hydroponically and thriving (the filmmakers got government sanction to use real marijuana, but no plants were harmed in the making of this movie.) The next step is to get a dealer, and Grace travels to London to find one. Protected by her impenetrable combination of pluckiness and naivete, not to mention a stunning white leisure suit, she beards the den of the enjoyably sleazy Jacques (Tcheky Karyo of Patriot), wins him over, and..
To make a long story short, she lives happily ever after. Of course, certain concessions to popular morality have to be made, but that's no problem for these folks. Blethyn is a wonderful actress who hits every note with perfect pitch, Ferguson adds an appealing Scots scruffiness, and the supporting cast is filled with crafty pros who know just how to take this well-worn material and make you grin at it all over again. Beautifully photographed Cornwall adds to the enjoyment.
Saving Grace is in the tradition of movies like The Full Monty and Saving Ned Devine, and the old Ealing Studio classics like Tight Little Island, and while it doesn't take that tradition to any new levels, it doesn't let it down.
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