Cold Comfort Farm
by John Schlesinger
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DVD details
Actor: Eileen Atkins, Freddie Jones, Kate Beckinsale, Sheila Burrell, Stephen FryDirector: John Schlesinger
Brand: Universal Studios
Cinematographer: Chris Seager
Producer: Alison Gilby
Producer: Antony Root
Producer: Joanna Gueritz
Producer: Richard Broke
Writer: Malcolm Bradbury
Writer: Stella Gibbons
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 95 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-07-01
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Reviews of Cold Comfort Farm
DVD Review: Quite amusing.
Summary: 4 Stars
Cold Comfort Farm (John Schlesinger, 1995)
The great John Schlesinger, director of such fantastic films as Marathon Man, The Believers, and Midnight Cowboy, would not seem to be one's go-to guy for a light comedy. In fact, I can't think of a comedy the guy's done, other than this, since Billy Liar back in the sixties. But did he pull it off? You bet he did.
Flora Poste (Kate Beckinsale, before she became a household name) has recently been orphaned. With dreams of being a writer, she decides, with the aid of her friend Mary (Joanna Lumley of Absolutely Fabulous) to find some relatives to stay with who will both put her up and give her ample material for the Great English Novel she plans to write. After a succession of increasingly odd letters from the darker, cobwebbed branches of the family tree, she gets one from her cousin Judith at Cold Comfort Farm, and decides it seems like just the place. Once she gets there, she meets the family: proselytizing patriarch Amos (Ian McKellen), dolorous cousin Judith (Dame Eileen Atkins, recently in Ask the Dust), brothers Reuben (Layer Cake's Ivan Kaye) and Seth (Dark City's Rufus Sewell), farmhands Adam (Freddie Jones, recently of Ladies in Lavender), Urk (character actor Jeremy Peters), and Rennet (Sophie Revell, in her only screen role), and Adam's gorgeous daughter Elfene (Kafka's Anna Miles, in her last screen role to date), all presided over by the house's mysterious matriarch, Aunt Ada (Sheila Burrell of Devices and Desires), who hasn't left her room in twenty years. In addition to having to deal with an entire family of neurotics, she's also being pursued by the eccentric writer Myberg (Stephen Fry), London socialite Charles (Tomrorow Never Dies' Christopher Bowen), and a Hollywood film producer (character actor Trevor Baxter). Enough material for an entire series of novels, but Flora finds that she has a touch for sorting out tangled lives instead.
It's a lovely little film, picturesque and neat, which is the main criticism of it by those familiar with the novel and the previous adaptation (also filmed for British television back in 1968). Schlesinger did, at least, get his actors dirty to portray farmhands, an appreciated touch in a world where James Bond never wrinkles his suit. Still, the chaos into which Flora Poste walks never seems to get all that chaotic. (Myberg, whom she constantly refers to as "Mybug," is the notable exception; Fry does a fine, fine job.) The movie could dual-class as a pastoral at times. One almost expects James Herriot to stop by and check for sick animals. Still, this does nothing to lessen the amusement factor, nor the inevitable feel-good endings to all the many tangled stories to be found here.
Amusing rather than gut-wrenchingly funny, but still lots of fun. Worth your time. ***
Description of Cold Comfort Farm
RURAL BRITISH ECCENTRICS CHANGE THEIR WAYS UNDER THE INFLUENCEOF A CHIC COUSIN FROM 1930'S LONDON. FROM THE STELLA GIBBONSNOVEL.This hilarious spoof on British costume dramas based on great literature stars Kate Beckinsale (Much Ado About Nothing) as a strong-willed, young woman named Miss Flora Poste, who finds herself orphaned and without means in the 1930s. Moving in with some half-savage relatives on a country farm, Flora is hardly daunted by their primitivism (as she might have been in a novel by Thomas Hardy) but instead takes charge and imposes hygiene, order, and good manners on the dirty, superstitious lot. John Schlesinger directs this brisk, infectious adaptation of the 1932 novel by Stella Gibbons. Beckinsale is wonderful, and the rest of the savvy, inspired cast perfectly send up a host of literary clichés. --Tom Keogh
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