Their Finest (2017)

I’m not really one for movies about love or set during wars, but I’m very much one for movies with Gemma Arterton in them. Sadly I can report that, unlike in Byzantium, she does not spend any of this movie in beautiful lingerie. Arterton plays a woman employed to bring a female voice to propaganda efforts in the second world war, and ends up playing a much bigger role in the broader film industry. 

In spite of my mixed experiences with Lone Scherfig’s other works (for the record: winced through One Day, to this day cannot decided how I ended up feeling about An Education), this might have worked out how to needle into me. It feels like one of those inspired-by-a-true-story films, even though it isn’t, but it doesn't feel dry. Instead, you have a movie about writing - hardly the most visually dynamic profession, but one I love stories about. The love story is much less my speed, but I appreciated that Arterton’s Caterin was very rarely a passive character. At one point, another character questions her self respect; that was the aspect of her characterisation that I felt was the most consistent and fleshed out. In the same way that her role was to reach the women who had been ignored by the public, I felt like in turn as a female audience member I was being catered to in terms of a streamlined, conventionally acceptable form of feminism. I loved the balance given there, and the refusal to allow for imbalances in power in relationships. 

What didn’t I like? There are always niggling issues. There’s a plot point towards the end that is foreshadowed early but still seems not entirely necessary to the flow of the story, and while it makes a big emotional impact, I’m not sure it was there to do anything other than emotionally manipulate. In that last act it did also tend towards the cliche, and I can’t lie and say that I didn’t cringe through some of the more romantic segments. I’m a creature of habit and they didn’t come organically enough to put me at ease. These sound like little things, but they do really upset what is generally a very well balanced movie with good pacing.

Here's the extra paragraph where I talk about LGBT issues or a major feminist critique or broader social issues that are important to me personally. So let’s talk about LGBT coding! You might have noticed that I am hyper aware when it comes to picking out subtext and representation, which is not always the most beneficial thing. It says something about this film that I was so worried that their representation of a lesbian was going to turn out to be subtextual, especially since she is easily one of the most likeable characters with all the best dialogue. It’s just nice to see characters being outwardly not-straight rather than tools for queer-baiting or just heavily coded one way or another. You don’t notice it when you’re not looking for it, but when you are it makes all the difference in the world. If this movie had used a label I might have been even more enthusiastic, but in treading that balance between explicative and gimmicky, I get the difficulty.

Rating: 6/10 - I won't give a movie a good mark just because a lesbian character doesn't die, I promise. This is a solid movie. It's an emotionally gripping story with some real weight to it, and surprising bits of levity, but in the long run, it's quite similar to other movies of its ilk.