REVIEW: The Bookshop is a dozy British period snoozer that is nobody’s idea of a page turner

NEW film The Bookshop is a dozy adaptation of the 1978 novel of the same name. Feel free to leave this one on the shelf, says Leigh Paatsch.

Scene from The Bookshop (2018). Source — Transmission Films

IN A smallish British seaside hamlet in the 1950s, a tallish British widow in her forties opens a bookshop.

Some of the locals are supportive of the new venture. Others are dead against it.

Customer traffic and sales levels fluctuate moderately as tensions ebb and flow.

This, ladies and gentlemen, completely covers the tiny patch of narrative territory to be traversed by The Bookshop, a shy, retiring and rather dozy adaptation of the 1978 novel of the same name by Penelope Fitzgerald.

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Emily Mortimer in a high-octane action sequence from The Bookshop (2018). Source — Transmission Films

Unless you have been feverishly scanning cinema guides for the last 40 years to check if a movie version of the novel has finally been made, there is no need to rush to check out this snoozer.

Florence Green (Emily Mortimer) is an aspiring trader of tomes who hits the coastal village of Hardborough hellbent on vending volumes at anyone of reading age.

There is something faintly sad about Florence that probably has something to do with all the hazy flashbacks we get of her late husband. He loved the printed page just as much as she does, and oh, she does miss him so.

The rumours are true. Bill Nighy did all of his own stunts in The Bookshop. Source — Transmission Films

Florence’s choice of venue for her shop — a decrepit landmark known to all as ‘The Old House’ — gets right up the nose of snooty socialite Violet Gamart (Patricia Clarkson). This busybody had her own plans for the site, and never got around to making them happen.

Now she’s roused a rabble of locals to hassle poor Florence around the clock (and hopefully, right out of town).

Coming to Florence’s defence is a loyal mail-order customer named Edmund Brundish (Bill Nighy), a soft-spoken recluse with some hard words in mind for the viperish Violet.

Exactly why The Bookshop takes almost two hours to stitch together this threadbare tale is not so much a mystery as it is a miscalculation.

Fun fact: many actual books were used in the making of The Bookshop. Source — Transmission Films

Writer-director Isabel Coixet has instructed her cast to underplay their roles to the point where their dialogue seems almost coded.

Forcing an air of enigma upon a story which is really just a straightforward celebration of the joys of reading and the difficulties of running a small business is a mistake Coixet cannot resist making repeatedly.

THE BOOKSHOP (PG)

Rating: Two stars (2 out of 5)

Director: Isabel Coixet (Learning to Drive)

Starring: Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy, Patricia Clarkson, Honor Kneafsey, James Lance.

Much reading between the lines draws a blank.

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Originally published as REVIEW: The Bookshop is a dozy British period snoozer that is nobody’s idea of a page turner