The Guernsey Lit­er­ary and Pota­to Peel Pie Society

You imag­ine that the mak­ers of The Guernsey Lit­er­ary and Pota­to Peel Pie Soci­ety prob­a­bly had a few meet­ings about whether there might be a more stream­lined and sleek title for this film about the Guernsey Lit­er­ary and Pota­to Peel Pie Soci­ety. Some­thing hash­tag­gable, some­thing you can fit into a tweet with­out using up all your char­ac­ters. Upon watch­ing the film it becomes quick­ly evi­dent that this title is unavoid­able and inevitable, so inte­gral is the Guernsey Lit­er­ary and Pota­to Peel Pie Soci­ety to its dra­mat­ic machinations.

The War is over and Eng­land is in the process of lick­ing its wounds. Lily James is well cast as wide-eyed lit­er­ary sen­sa­tion Juli­et Ash­ton who wants out of the rut of well-attend­ed book tours and oppres­sive writ­ing sched­ules. She decides to pick at a thread which takes her to Guernsey and, more specif­i­cal­ly, the Guernsey Lit­er­ary and Pota­to Peel Pie Soci­ety. She strikes up a quaint postal cor­re­spon­dence with Michiel Huisman’s Dawsey Adams, a man she dis­cov­ers to be the type of chis­elled, griz­zled hunk who appears on the cov­er of roman­tic trash fic­tion. Their mutu­al love of Charles Lamb leads at first to a meet­ing, and then to a friend­ship, and then…

The Guernsey Lit­er­ary and Pota­to Peel Pie Soci­ety came into being dur­ing World War Two when Guernsey was suf­fer­ing the indig­ni­ty of Ger­man occu­pa­tion. Yet it wasn’t as cov­er for any local resis­tance, more as a way to keep spir­its up dur­ing try­ing times. Among the select crew is Pene­lope Wilton’s melan­choly Ameila, Tom Courtenay’s age­ing post­mas­ter Eban, Kather­ine Parkin­son dot­ty gin queen Iso­la and Jes­si­ca Brown Findlay’s Eliz­a­beth, who is no longer on the scene when Juli­et final­ly pitch­es up. The plan is to turn a quick jaunt to the chan­nel islands into a nice broad­sheet essay on the sto­ry behind this strange lit­tle book group, yet the more Juli­et digs for infor­ma­tion, the more it seems that her host would rather she didn’t.

Direct­ed with admirable robust­ness by vet­er­an British direc­tor Mike Newell, the film sets out its stall as a com­e­dy of clash­ing cul­tures and quaint parochial life, before fan­ning out into a tale of wartime intrigue and famil­ial sac­ri­fice. The film doesn’t do any­thing out of the ordi­nary, instead press­ing down on the same old notes with con­fi­dence and poise. The sto­ry is a bit of a run­about, too, as it’s a case of watch­ing Juli­et con­nect pieces of the puz­zle by essen­tial­ly beg­ging dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters to reveal the next salient plot point.

On the plus side, it boasts a clutch of well-oiled char­ac­ter turns, with Courte­nay bring­ing a mea­sure of stol­id empa­thy to what ini­tial­ly appears as an acci­dent-prone old geezer, and James keep­ing things inter­est­ing in the lead. Top trump, how­ev­er is Parkin­son who brings gen­uine weight to a com­ic relief role. A beau­ti­ful sequence where she and Juli­et dis­cuss romance and escape while bunk­ing togeth­er is the film’s lowkey highlight.