[DVD Calendar]
After having read the stage/play script version of this story, I realized I hadn’t actually seen this 2003, starring Helen Mirren, Julie Walters, Philip Glenister, and a cast of other recognizable British actors. Based on real-life events from 1999, where a group of middle-aged British women from a small community in Yorkshire decided to post nude, though tastefully, for a calendar to raise funds to purchase a new couch for the waiting room of a cancer treatment center where one of their husbands had been treated, this film is packed with both laughs and some serious emotional punch. The performances are strong throughout, from Mirren as the flamboyent best friend who proposes the calendar, to Walters as the widow whose experiences inspire the calendar, to the many other women who made up the rest of the calendar’s pages. For a film addressing the issues of tasteful nudity, the filmmakers manage to be both serious and light-hearted in how they portray the photography sessions for the calendar. The English countryside, and the tradition of Women’s Institutes come across beautifully. But at its core, this is a relationship comedy, and the relationships between all the primary characters shine. If you haven’t sampled this one, I highly recommend it, although I’d love to see it performed on stage as well. The stage drama was first produced in 2008, and subsequently in 2015, a musical adaptation was produced in England, to some success.
[ Internet Movie Database entry for this film ] | [ Wikipedia page for the Calendar Girls movie ]
Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library
Bennett Martin Public Library
New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!
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