Directed by John Schlesinger

Starring Kate Beckinsale, Rufus Sewell, Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry, Miriam Margolyes & Joanna Lumley

"Cold Comfort Farm"

Opens: May 24, 1996 | Rated: PG


The central character in "Cold Comfort Farm" is sort of a young flapper version of Holly Golightly, in reverse. She's quite the 1920s English society busybody whose parents have died as the film opens, and she has to decide what relatives to go to live with.

She picks the country bumpkin family who say they are indebted to her father for an unexplained great misdeed. Although she has offers from more well-to-do family members, she's lured to the ramshackle farm by the challenge of fixing up her country cousins.

Adorably prim and chirpy, Kate Beckinsale (Claudio from Kenneth Branagh's "Much Ado About Nothing") is charming and wonderful as a girl that just can't mind her own business, but interferes in a way that most don't seem to mind to awfully much.

In a manner of weeks the pretty but loopy farm daughter is engaged to the most eligible bachelor in the county, the son's been packed off to Hollywood with a star-making producer and the father (Ian McKellan) has left for America to preach fire and brimstone. The rest of the family are bitter as their very tight unit is breaking up, but soon the visiting cousin has done right by them all.

"Cold Comfort" is one of what I like to call "society comedies," and it is very much in the vein of "Metropolitan" and "The Philadelphia Story."

It's also very English, so if you don't go in for movies like as "Four Weddings and a Funeral," don't bother seeing it. But get used to hearing how wonderful it from everyone who does.

©1996 All Rights Reserved.





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