Movie Recommendation

I watched a great movie last night: The Girl in the Café. It wasn’t a theatrical release; I think it may have just been an HBO movie. (I checked for the Netflixers among us, and yes, it’s available for rental.) The screenplay was written by Richard Curtis, who is probably one of the best television and screenwriters working today, contributing to Black Adder, Mr. Bean, and The Vicar of Dibley series, and writing the screenplays for Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, both Bridget Joneses, and Love Actually. He is a splendid writer of dialogue and has a keen eye for teasing out the most interesting bits of relationships of all sorts—romantic couplings, family ties, friendships.

Every time we talk about movies, his work comes up—usually Four Weddings and Love Actually, and so I wanted to mention The Girl in the Café. It’s got all the things fans of those films love about his work (and it also stars Bill Nighy, who played aging rocker Billy Mack in the latter), and has the additional draw of being a political film. Nighy plays a civil servant who works for Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, and as the story begins, they are preparing for the G8 Summit in Reykjavik. The lion’s share of the story takes place with the Summit as a backdrop, and I won’t spoil anything by giving away any more details than that.

I just adored it. And, honestly, I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in seeing a great, unabashedly liberal political film, too.