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Can words express how much I loved this movie????? I mean aside from the fact that Ewan McGregor has got to be one fo the most beautiful men on the face of the earth .... the music, the colour, the costumes, the dancing - it was sensational!
It's not often that a movie lives up to my expectations - and this one met them and exceeded them. For me, I didn't know what to expect when I went in because the reviews had been so mixed - veering towards bad.
I'll write a review when I can, but for the time being, I've been posting madly at http://pub25.ezboard.com/bewanspotting
"The Spitfire Grill" is a very quiet movie, very gentle and pensive. As it was touted most dubiously as the 'new Fried Green Tomatoes', I approached the film with an open mind, but with the faint feeling of apprehensive expectation one feels when one sees a movie that has been labelled the 'new' anything.
I didn't think that the movie was named after that Australian insect called the 'Spitfire', and was proved right. The 'Spitfire Grill' owned by the crotchety Hannah was named in honour of her husband who had proved himself something of a hero during World War II. The Grill is in Gilead, a small town in Maine to which a damaged, lonely girl by the name of Percy Talbot goes to for blind salvation.
Percy Talbot has been in prison - the film does not say for how long - for manslaughter or murder depending on the person you believe. With ink black hair and a dead pale face, she resembles a young Jody Foster with her angular face and haunting eyes.
Despite having lived a life of ugliness, both inside prison and outside of it, this does not seem to have damaged Percy's capacity and hunger for beauty and kindness. She has the ability to give love as well as attract it, as is evidenced by her shy, delightful friendships with Shelby - an awkward down trodden wife and Joe, a hopeful suitor.
The film meanders, with quiet moments of intense beauty and sadness. The highlight of the film for me was seeing the beauty-starved Percy staring at a beautiful waterfall with disbelieving wonder. The tears might almost be of grief as the ultimate irony is that this thing of beauty is to be the means of ridding her of her life.
Alison Elliott is the strength of this film. With her unaffected steady gaze and simple philosophy, she is refreshingly uncliched and very believable. Ellen Burstyn might be an Academy Award Winner, but I found her rather unconvincing and was wondering whether she was trying to be Shirley Maclaine or Katherine Hepburn. Tying for second place in the believability stakes were Shelby and Joe. Shelby's change from meek mouse to fiery termagent didn't stretch our sense of incredulity as much as it might have in the hands of a less capable actress. Joe is also delightful, making us doubt his motives in the beginning. Could he really be that good? And proving to us in the end that he really is, and that his love for the awkward, yet desperately lovable Percy is real and unalloyed by anything but sincerity.
Shows and films set in small towns can be manipulative. There's something tediously cliched about the gossips, the petty arguments which are all transcended by a collective sense of good, love and solidarity. 'The Spitfire Grill' had these stereotypical images, yet the film works because of the juxtaposition of such a delightfully complex character as Percy Talbot amidst the townfolk.
It's not the best film I've seen, but for some reason, it leaves a lasting impression and the images linger long after the film has come to a close.
One personal beef I have is Percy's ultimate fate. It made me think about something someone once told me about how men could be redeemed, but women could not. A man who has killed or committed a crime, can reach salvation - he can be forgiven, but a woman who has killed or committed a crime, has no way of cleansing her sins except to die. It almost reminds me of that old poem that discusses when a woman loses her reputation, her only option is to die. Not the nicest thought in the world.
Other reviews of 'The Spitfire
Grill':
Cinemania Review
At Movieweb
Review by James Berardinelli
Film Scouts
Planet Lunch
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This page last updated 4 July 1997, sometime in the evening.