Review: The Bookshop
Based on the 1978 novel by Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop is set in 1959 in the fictional seaside town of Hardborough, Suffolk. It concerns Florence Green (Emily Mortimer), a war widow of 16 years, who decides to buy a property named the Old House and convert it into a bookshop.
It would seem an admirable ambition, especially since the Old House has been damp, decayed, and dilapidated for seemingly quite some time. Yet her enterprise, politely and patronisingly applauded by the townsfolk, puts her in the crosshair's of Hardborough's coolly calculating queen bee, Violet Gamart (Patricia Clarkson), who would prefer to turn the Old House into a local arts centre and makes it her mission to dissuade Florence from fulfilling her dream at every turn.
At first, Florence appears to vanquish Violet's machinations. Though various locals attempt to convince her to set up her bookshop in a different location, she presses on with the purchase of the Old House and it isn't too long before the bookshop is a success. Her first customer, and perhaps the only own who truly appreciates her venture and is most empathetic to her dealings with Violet, is Mr. Brundish (Bill Nighy), a wifeless recluse who, as the film's voiceover (Julie Christie) informs us, adores books with the same passion as he loathes his fellow man. She introduces him to Ray Bradbury, whom he instantly loves, and when she seeks his advice on whether Vladimir Nabokov's recently published Lolita would be a suitable addition to her stock, he opines, "[The people] won't understand it, but that's for the best. Understanding makes the mind lazy."
Though they initially correspond via messengered notes, he soon, much to the town's surprise, invites her to have tea at his home. Their meeting is one of the film's highlights, with Brundish professing admiration for her abundant courage and offering to help any way he can with her battle with Violet, whom he knows will stop at nothing until Florence is out of the bookshop. "You make me believe once more in things I'd long forgotten," he murmurs. Wonderfully played by both Nighy and Mortimer, the scene convincingly lays the groundwork for the restrained and tremulous not-quite-romance between Mr. Brundish and Florence. The two only ever meet twice, but both times are piercing, heartbreaking, knockout moments.
Their romance, much like Violet's precise and unrelenting destruction of Florence's dream, is conducted with the quiet but cumulative potency that is characteristic of writer-director Isabel Coixet. This is a film in which simplicity is used to scald, where a whisper reverberates like a scream, and where smiles mask the most poisonous of souls. Perhaps some will argue that the film is too muted in both its execution of the central conflict and its observation of the way in which class structures are always protected and maintained by those in power. Yet one is inescapably imprinted with those scenes between Florence and Brundish, and deeply chilled by the devastating showdown between Brundish and Violet, who barely moves or raises her voice but who ruthlessly eviscerates Brundish and proves why everyone who crosses her path is right to cower in fear.
The Bookshop
Directed by: Isabel Coixet
Written by: Isabel Coixet; based on the novel by Penelope Fitzgerald
Starring: Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Bill Nighy, Honor Kneafsey, James Lance
