BuzzFlash Reviews
The Girl in the Cafe (DVD)
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS
We were being good conscientious holiday consumers and searching for the right BuzzFlash premium to kick off the post-Thanksgiving gift buying frenzy. (Isn't this amazing that the Friday rush to buy stuff is a big news story EVERY year? What about the REAL news, like Iraq?)
Who would have thought that we would find it in a DVD we spotted at a local rental store? We had been eyeing it for sometime and put it on our mental list of one to rent if we couldn't get any of the recent big name releases. Well that day arrived and we took "The Girl in the Cafe" home to watch -- and it was like a little miracle. There was our holiday premium, a nearly neglected film.
What makes the "The Girl in the Cafe" so appropriate for BuzzFlash readers?
Well, first of all it is a finely and subtly acted film. At its core, it is about an unlikely and chance relationship between an aging, fading idealistic senior British financial analyst for the Chancellor of the Exchequer and a mysterious young woman he meets in a cafe. The actor (Bill Nighy) and actress (Kelly Macdonald) who play these roles excel in a nuanced dance of intimacy and personal growth.
Okay, now for the politics and the holiday cheer. Nighy is a member of the British delegation to the G-8 talks in Reykjavík. On a whim, he invites Macdonald to join him, barely knowing anything about her and just seeking her companionship. From that point on, the film takes an unexpected turn into G-8 politics that is both dazzling, realistic and irresistibly sentimental and moving.
Suffice it to say that Macdonald, in a few heartfelt and defiant statements, is able to pull off what Bono has been trying to do for years. She completely deflates the public relations goals of the G-8 and cuts to the heart of what the poobahs of the industrialized world should be doing: saving the children of the world and ending poverty.
It could all make for a sappy blob of overbearing moral preachiness, but nothing could be further from the reality of this fine little gem of a film. It weaves the development of the relationship between Nighy and Macdonald together with the realities of the G-8 conference and the unfolding of Macdonald's mysterious past in a totally believable and compelling fashion.
Even minor points of the film get it right. For instance, the American delegation insists on limiting G-8 financial goals to reducing AIDS in Africa. (This is, in reality, the stance Bush has adopted, while not really doing much to reduce the disease there at all.)
The end of the film is where holiday miracles come in -- and what cinched it as our holiday kick-off premium. The miracle may not happen, but it's the dream of anyone who cares about the world they live in with less fortunate individuals.
And the characters of Nighy and Macdonald stay true to themselves throughout.
In the BuzzFlash tradition, we are proud to recommend "The Girl in the Cafe" as a largely neglected film that deserves a much larger audience, a BuzzFlash audience to be sure.
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