The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: A tasty treat

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018) • View trailer 

Four stars. Rated TV-14, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.28.20

Films with excessively long titles generally should be regarded with suspicion.

 

As two classic examples, nothing can be gained from watching 1962’s The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? or 1967’s Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad.

 

As the members of the Guernsey book club watch with varying degrees of amusement —
from left, Isola (Katherine Parkinson), Eben (Tom Courtenay), young Eli (Kit Connor),
Amelia (Penelope Wilton) and Dawsey (Michiel Huisman) — Juliet (Lily James, far
right) bravely agrees to taste the infamous potato peel pie.

Happily, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society — exclusive to Netflix — is an entirely different creature: a solid British charmer from director Mike Newell, who brought us Enchanted April, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Mona Lisa Smile. Scripters Don Roos, Kevin Hood and Thomas Bezucha have fashioned a solid adaptation of the best-selling 2008 book by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows: not an easy task, given that it’s an epistolary novel, composed entirely of letters written between characters.

 

(Actually, the book’s creation is a fascinating story unto itself; curious souls are encouraged to research how Shaffer came to write it … but was unable to finish it.)

 

We meet author Juliet Ashton (Lily James) midway through a cross-country tour to promote her newest book; the setting is 1946, in a post-war England just beginning to rebuild itself. She is accompanied by publisher and best friend Sidney Stark (Matthew Goode), a solicitous fellow with the good-natured patience to tolerate his favorite writer’s occasional whims.

 

Such as her impulsive decision, following the exchange of a few letters, to visit the island community of Guernsey. Her curiosity is piqued by a farmer named Dawsey Adams (Michiel Huisman), who mentions belonging to a local book club dubbed, yes, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

 

Her departure displeases dashing American GI Mark Reynolds (Glen Powell), whose proposal she has just accepted (too rashly, we suspect). Even so, he graciously agrees to await her return.

 

Juliet’s arrival in Guernsey is greeted with enthusiasm by Dawsey and the other book club members: Eben Ramsey (Tom Courtenay), Amelia Maugery (Penelope Wilton) and Isola Pribby (Katherine Parkinson). Juliet soon learns that the “Society” was concocted during the early days of Guernsey’s German occupation, as a fabricated justification for breaking curfew (briefly revealed in a flashback prologue).

 

Needing to maintain the charade in order to satisfy a Nazi chaperone, the Society continued to meet on a regular basis. Even after their “minder” grew bored and stopped attending, the group realized how much they valued a book’s ability to whisk them away from what had become a bleak and brutal existence.

 

As these details are shared with Juliet, she realizes that one of the group’s founding members is missing: Elizabeth McKenna (Jessica Brown Findlay). Efforts to learn more about her produce nothing but awkward glances; Juliet’s subsequent suggestion — that the Society’s origin and ongoing existence would make a great story — prompts an unexpectedly agitated refusal from Amelia.

 

To make matters more enigmatic, the Bible-toting Charlotte Stimple (Bronagh Gallagher, waspishly haughty) — the landlady where Juliet has taken a room — archly warns that she “shouldn’t believe” everything the Society members tell her.

 

Ah, but you can’t dangle a mystery in front of an author with a journalist’s zeal for seeking the truth. As answers are revealed via research and lengthy chats with Isola — a bit too fond of the many-flavored bootleg gin she makes and sells to the locals — we’re granted additional flashbacks that reveal Elizabeth’s feisty spirit.

 

Aside from the secret behind Elizabeth’s absence, perhaps the more important question is whether Juliet’s probing will turn new friends into angry enemies.

 

James, as radiant a presence as she was in Darkest Hour and television’s Downton Abbey, is every inch a forthright, capably intelligent 1940s-era heroine in the mold of Barbara Stanwyck or Lauren Bacall. Juliet also is charming, of course, but not in a devious or manipulative manner; her curiosity is matched by her kindness and sensitivity, which serve her well as her gentle probing continues.

 

Findlay — also a Downton Abbey alum — grants Elizabeth the same indomitable spirit; she, too, has the pluck and courage that stand her well, in the face of German occupation.

 

Courtenay’s Eben is the personification of old-world cordiality and gallantry; he also has a protective bond with his grandson Eli (Kit Connor), something of a Society mascot. Parkinson is a hoot as the forlorn and mildly unfocused Isola, who wears her heart on her sleeve. Wilton — yet another Downton Abbey veteran — deftly navigates her character’s emotional complexities; she has the most challenging role by far, and several of her scenes are heartbreaking.

 

Huisman is ruggedly handsome, kind and aw-shucks amiable as Dawsey, who has a similarly strong attachment to his little girl, Kit (Florence Keen, a giggling, wide-eyed charmer).

 

Goode, quietly understated, makes Sidney the best friend we’d all love to have. And while Powell is appropriately debonair as Juliet’s fiancé, the actor — bless him — can’t deliver anything close to a proper American accent.

 

Although the many character dynamics are engaging, and the film’s tone mostly breezy, we’re occasionally reminded of the grim events that preceded the core story: revelations that land with a breath-gulping wallop. Shaffer never let readers forget that her book was equal parts history lesson, in terms of depicting what life was like, under German occupation, in Guernsey and neighboring channel island Jersey (the sole de jure portions of the British empire to be controlled by the Wehrmacht during the war).

 

Roos, Hood and Bezucha eliminated one of the book’s key characters, which simplifies some key relationships; this individual would have complicated matters in a two-hour film, and really isn’t missed.

 

Cinematographer Zac Nicholson re-creates the island’s lush countryside and dramatic coastline in Cornwall and Devon (Guernsey itself having changed too much, over time). Production designer James Merifield and costume designer Charlotte Walter convey a strong sense of time and place; we never doubt the 1940s setting.

Newell’s film is warm, engaging and laden with well-sculpted characters who bring this period saga to life: another hit from across the pond.