Before Edward departs for eleven months of volunteer work in Africa his family decide to get together for a family holiday on the island of Tresco in the off season. Here Edward, his sister Cynthia and his mother Patricia are joined by Rose the cook and art teacher Christopher. It quickly becomes apparent that there are family tensions; Cynthia clearly doesn't agree with her brother's decision to go to Africa thinking he should get a real job and there father never turns up despite talking to the phone to Patricia more than once. We follow them through their holiday; watching them go for a picnic, go out for a meal at the hotel and sit and talk... or sometimes just sit. As time passes tempers fray but never so much that we think it may have a lasting effect on the characters. Then they leave.
Having enjoyed many visits to the Isles of Scilly over the years I really wanted to enjoy this; the problem was it felt a little too real; as though we were just being shown a group of fairly unsympathetic characters having a miserable time on holiday. There were long pauses and conversations about things of little consequence; realistic perhaps but sadly not that interesting. Strangely the family seemed to have almost no interaction with anybody but each other, Rose and Christopher; we see Rose chatting to a couple of locals when she acquires some lobsters and pheasants for dinner but apart from that the island seems strangely deserted... even when they go out for dinner the restaurant is deserted apart from the staff... if it hadn't been for the fact that we see them leave at the end I might have thought it was all a metaphor for purgatory! I can't really fault the actors as I did believe in the characters; even if this meant I disliked many of them! I might not have found this hilarious but I'd be lying if I said I didn't laugh at all.
While this clearly wasn't the film for me I certainly wouldn't recommend avoiding it all together; the large number of '10' reviews suggests quite a few people love it; perhaps I was just missing something and you will love it too.
Having enjoyed many visits to the Isles of Scilly over the years I really wanted to enjoy this; the problem was it felt a little too real; as though we were just being shown a group of fairly unsympathetic characters having a miserable time on holiday. There were long pauses and conversations about things of little consequence; realistic perhaps but sadly not that interesting. Strangely the family seemed to have almost no interaction with anybody but each other, Rose and Christopher; we see Rose chatting to a couple of locals when she acquires some lobsters and pheasants for dinner but apart from that the island seems strangely deserted... even when they go out for dinner the restaurant is deserted apart from the staff... if it hadn't been for the fact that we see them leave at the end I might have thought it was all a metaphor for purgatory! I can't really fault the actors as I did believe in the characters; even if this meant I disliked many of them! I might not have found this hilarious but I'd be lying if I said I didn't laugh at all.
While this clearly wasn't the film for me I certainly wouldn't recommend avoiding it all together; the large number of '10' reviews suggests quite a few people love it; perhaps I was just missing something and you will love it too.