The Bookshop [2018] – ★★

Leo Tolstoy once said that all literature can be divided into two types of stories: a man goes on a journey, and a stranger comes to town. The Bookshop falls into the latter category. The film first caught my attention when it won a number of Spanish Goya Awards, including the Best Film, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay Awards, and also two Gaudi Awards. It is based on a novel by Penelope Fitzgerald and is set in England in 1959. In this story, Florence Green (Emily Mortimer), a widow, opens a bookshop in a small coastal town and is taken aback by all the amazement of its inhabitants at such a move. Florence begins friendship with a reclusive book-lover Edmund Brundish (Bill Nighy) and employs a schoolgirl Christine to assist her bookshop, not even realising the strings that a local woman of power Violet Gamart (Patricia Clarkson) is willing to pull to whisk Florence out of her property and turn the bookshop premises into an art centre. It is clear that this little film can work its charm to the hearts of the audience. However, it has so many problems, including the incredulous tension/antagonist moves and the slow pace, that the film may be best described as what looks like a cinematic present wrapped in a mawkish gift paper which takes too long to open and, when it is opened, nothing but a pile of saccharine and a bitter sense of disappointment found inside.

The Bookshop starts on a strong note when its opening line is the following: “When we read a story, we inhabit it…the covers of a book like a roof and walls of a house”… “She liked the moment when you finish a book and a story keeps playing…[in your head] like the most vivid dream”. However, there needs to be a line drawn between an inspirational story and a completely fanciful and mawkish material. Unfortunately, as The Bookshop progresses, the story starts to resemble the latter scenario, being quite manipulative emotionally.

As a character, Florence Green is good-hearted, open and idealistic lady who has a passion for books and wants to share that passion with others. In that way, the film strongly resembles Chocolat (2000), both in its plot and characters. Since The Bookshop was written earlier, it probably makes greater sense to talk about Chocolat resembling The Bookshop. In both films, a woman without a partner comes from afar to a little village and opens a shop which unsettles the inhabitants. The key for the heroine in both stories is to win the goodwill of a seemingly unapproachable older member of the opposite sex, and she succeeds – the friendliness of Comte de Reynaud and Edmund Brundish respectively. Moreover, in both stories, there is a little girl near the main heroine (Anouk and Christine respectively) and they fight together for their shop to become an accepted and respectable place in the community. Also, both films are based on books and hint at a morality dilemma at some point.

Emily Mortimer (Shutter Island (2010), Match Point (2005)) may fit the image of Florence Green perfectly and acts well, but her character does become annoying after some time. The problem with this film is that Florence is too unreasonably good, Violet Gamart is too unreasonable bad, and the end result of the plot verges on ridiculous. It all becomes a bit silly when we have to accept that Violet Gamart wants to make an art centre out of one particular building which was in decline and will stop at nothing to reach her aim, and, in turn, Florence also only wants her bookshop at one particular residence. Florence’s obstacles seem neither immense nor believable. We may wonder about the powers of some people in small English rural villages in the 1950s, but when we also find out that two bookshops cannot compete in a single town, our patience to find out logic or meaning to events may run out. The result is a sentimentally foolish whimsy of a plot – a melodrama cooked out of nothing.  

Even if we interpret The Bookshop as a parable whereby there is a symbolic win of hidden power and law over people’s dreams, the film still misses some great opportunities to make the story more intriguing and interesting (perhaps by remaining too faithful to the book). In fact, as soon as we finally guess that now the plot goes for something deeper and understandable, it then takes a giant step backwards and we find ourselves once more where we started. For example, one may think that advising Florence to stock Nabokov’s Lolita in large numbers may lead to a moral outrage in the conservative community and her subsequent downfall. However, the film is not concerned with that side of affairs at all. 

However, there is also the interesting character of Edmund Brundish and the good performance by Bill Nighy (The Limehouse Golem (2017)), which could make The Bookshop memorable. Edmund is described in the film as “[adoring] books with the same passion that he detest[s] his fellow men”, and when Edmund becomes friends with Florence, it is her courage that he admires the most. There is some hint at romance between the two in the film, with the love for books bringing them together. However, the story is only too quick to put everything in their original order, and Edmund and Florence into their respective places, and what follows is one awkward conversation (and many silences) after another. Also, because the characters of Florence and Edmund are exaggerated, the story does not become any more believable. Edmund is portrayed as a total misanthrope, and Florence is too friendly and open to strangers. 

Another unfortunate aspect of this film is the theatrical and self-conscious acting of its actors. Perhaps, this was the movie’s intention to produce this odd effect, and it is most noticeable in James Lance who plays Milo North, a character who is never properly introduced in this movie. There is plenty of dry humour and British eccentricity, but the artificiality of the presentation and acting is still more memorable than any feeble attempts made at authenticity. Moreover, the film overdoes its off-screen narration/voice-over, trying too hard to ensure that the audience feels for Florence in her situation. However, in the end, the story has little to offer, and the fact that the film progresses forward with the confused pace of a newly-born snail does not help matters much. Apart from one single thought-provoking moment at the end of the film, the ending is disappointingly predictable.

The Spanish-born Isabel Coixet, both the screenwriter and director of The Bookshop, has certainty tried to inject into the film a certain charm, which also sporadically emanates from both Mortimer and Nighy, but, apart from the beautiful production, the film has not managed to get much else right. The sentimentality and whimsiness of The Bookshop are overbearing; its story is almost completely lost in its confused pacing; and its characters’ behaviour is both awkward and hardly believable. This, coupled with the theatricality of the presentation and acting, makes for a peculiar cinematic experience, which may just be enjoyed by those who appreciate these qualities in a film. However, The Bookshop also commits one cardinal sin in film-making and it is boredom, and, hence, a low score.