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Saving Grace film review
SAVING GRACE
Running time: 94 mins
Starring: Brenda Blethyn, Craig Ferguson, Valerie Edmond, Martin Clunes, Tchiky Karyo, Phyllida Law, Diana Quick, Leslie Phillips
Grace Trevethan (Brenda Blethyn) has led a sheltered life, allowing her husband John to handle all of their business affairs while she gets on with the serious business of hosting tea parties for the Women's Institute.
Her one real talent is gardening, and she wiles away many an hour growing orchids in her beautiful greenhouse. Until the fateful day John is killed in a freak parachute jump accident and Grace is left to take care of herself and the estate on her own. The local community rallies around her but there are still more shocks in store for the grieving widow. Firstly she learns that John has taken a mistress - the aptly named Honey (Diana Quick). More worryingly, it transpires that he was in serious financial trouble as a result of dodgy dealings in the City of London.
The situation is so grave that the bank is threatening to take away Grace's beloved country house unless she can come up with the missing funds: £300,000. And that's in addition to mortgage payments of £2,000 per month.
Grace has no idea how she will raise so much money in such a small space of time. It's not as if money grows on trees. Or does it? Prompted by her gardener Matthew (Craig Ferguson), Grace agrees to turn her greenhouse into a temporary marijuana plantation, with the intention of cultivating one bumper crop, selling it on to a dealer in London, and saving the house from repossession. Presuming that Sergeant Alfred (Ken Campbell) doesn't stumble on the stash before it's ready to sell and arrest the lot of them... Reminiscent of Waking Ned, another British comedy about a community breaking the law for the greater good, Saving Grace is a slight but utterly charming tale of an ordinary woman who learns that crime does pay. Jolly well.
Blethyn is adorable as worldy unwise Grace, transforming herself into the most unlikely drugs dealer ever to frequent the south coast. The best scenes rely heavily on her impeccable comic timing and Blethyn never fails to impress, whether it be sampling her very first joint or trying her hand as a pusher on the streets of the capital - "You lookin' fer somethin' luv?" she asks bemused passersby, dressed head to toe in the most conspicuous 70s white suit and hat imaginable.
Ferguson, who co-wrote the screenplay with Mark Crowdy, plays scallywag Matthew with a twinkle in his eye and shares several memorable scenes with Blethyn. A sub-plot involving his misfiring romance with fisherwoman Nicky (Valerie Edmond) is seriously malnourished.
The screenwriters and director Nigel Cole go to great pains to make sure the film doesn't trivialise drugs. They ensure that while we recognise Grace and Matthew's actions as being illegal, we root for them, culminating in a feel-good fantasy ending which cleverly gets round the big moral question of what happens to the marijuana once Grace sells it.
