'The Bookshop': Berlin Review

Dir. Isabel Coixet. Spain/UK,Germany. 2018. 110 mins.

It’s possible to imagine a film having fun with a bookshop setting – contriving a confluence of bookish obsessives, romantics, hobbyists and academics, their myriad stories and relationships crackling to life amid the shelves. Yet surprisingly few have mined the possibilities (Notting Hill had its moments) and Isabel Coixet certainly has nothing upbeat in mind. Indeed, she’s produced a film so ponderous that it can only drive people away from the cinema and towards a good book.

The film’s tone is maudlin bordering on amateurish

By all accounts, Coixet’s source material, Penelope Fitzgerald’s 1978, Booker Prize-nominated novel, is one such. Set in 1959, it tells how the small-minded burghers of a coastal town in the east of England conspire against the town’s only bookshop, whose owner’s cultural presumption includes stocking Nabokov’s Lolita.

Despite its pessimistic ending, Fitzgerald infused her story with satirical wit and colourful characters. For some reason, Coixet’s adaptation throws those elements away, leaving only a moribund drama about the triumph of the small-minded. Despite winning three Goyas and an impressive performance at the Spanish box-office, it’s unlikely that critical response would buoy its theatrical life internationally.

After several “hazy years” of reading and grieving, the widow Florence Green (Emily Mortimer) decides to dust herself off and bring a long-held dream to life. She duly buys the ramshackle Old House in Hardborough, moves in and opens a bookshop on the premises. However, retired general’s wife and self-styled town leader Mrs Gamart (Patricia Clarkson), has set her sights on the Old House as the location for her pet project, an arts centre. Unable to persuade Florence to sell, Gamart starts a campaign of rumours and skulduggery to force her hand.

The shop succeeds, regardless, for a time. Florence employs a bright schoolgirl as an assistant and finds an unlikely ally in the form of the reclusive but exceedingly bookish Mr Brundish (Bill Nighy), the pair bonding over Ray Bradbury and Nabokov. But when Florence takes the risky decision to fill her window display with Lolitas, Gamart starts to turn the screw.

In theory there’s plenty here to engage: a critique of Little England philistinism, the arrival of provocative literature into a sleepy backwater that barely reads, the revolt of a courageous woman against the establishment. Yet none of that comes to life – Lolita’s themes aren’t even discussed – in Coixet’s enervating treatment. Ironically, given the subject, the script is a stilted and airless stinker, with actors often stuck on pause and not even the silver-tongued Nighy able to coax more than a laugh or two from his lines.

In fact, the director has opted for, or been offered Nighy in his most melancholy, least effective mode, which only sums up the film’s tone, which is maudlin bordering on amateurish. The supporting characters are barely two-dimensional, with James Lance as Gamart’s louche partner in crime prancing around as though he’s in a Seventies sitcom. There’s little flow to the editing, while composer Alfonso de Vilallonga’s plangent strings only suggest the sound of paint drying on the walls of the Old House.

Even the inestimable Clarkson fails to find much beyond cartoon upper-class villainy; she and Coixet have had better success together, notably in Elegy, nominated for the Golden Bear in 2008. Most credit goes to Mortimer, who reliably exudes grace and quiet strength in adversity.