Film
The Bookshop
- Director
- Isabel Coixet
- Certificate
- PG
- Running Time
- 113 mins
A smalltown heritage drama, adapted by Spanish director Isabel Coixet from the Booker-shortlisted 1978 novel of the same title by Penelope Fitzgerald. Emily Mortimer plays middle-aged widow Florence Green, who opens a nice new bookshop in a grey and damp Suffolk coastal town in 1959. Before long, many of the philistine locals are seduced by the lure of great literature, much to the delight of her reclusive ally Mr. Brundish (Bill Nighy, enjoying his mandatory casting in such roles), who lives in the big house at the top of the hill.
But not everyone is delighted by this cultural revolution, prompting low-level skulduggery as progressives and reactionaries go to war in a suitably genteel manner that may well remind you of the Brexit debate as it was played out in grotty backwaters across the land. Coixet’s Spanish-German-British co-production bagged three Goya awards in Spain, but UK critics have described it as a bit of a Europudding that jettisons much of the novel’s subtlety.
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