Lady Keyes: Celle qui en savait trop

We can't help but believe there could have been a good movie here, based on the beginnings of World War II. There has been scant examination of the angle of patriotic Brits who believed Neville Chamberlain's strategy of appeasement was the only hope to save an ill-equipped and unprepared Britain faced with Nazi expansion. That is understandable, considering this movie took place two years before the United States entered the war. It is entirely plausible that some elements of British intelligentsia favored leaving the Nazis to their own devices, so that English society could be saved. However, this movie darts, flits and dances all over the screen, where we often are unsure who we should be rooting for. Even in the end, we are disappointed. Many of the scenes do little but tease us, with no payoff. It's too bad. A good idea - as well as some good actors - were wasted in this production.

Though there have been books and other films that deal with the dissidence between the aristocrats and the general populace of England around the topic of WW II, this beautifully executed 'historical thriller' brings many aspects of those discrepancies of opinion to light in a manner not unlike the similar thought processes in Germany at the same time: the gentry of Germany turned a blind eye to the events surrounding them (The Final Solution) in order to believe in what they chose to believe as a promise for stabilization and world importance as a genteel country. Writer/Director Stephen Poliakoff has based his examination of this problem on focusing on the life of one particular character whose fate was the standard of the dispossessed.

The year is 1939 and the aristocratic family of Sir Alexander Keyes (Bill Nighy) and his wife Maud (Jenny Agutter) are living what seems to be an idyllic life with their children Ralph (Eddie Redmayne), Celia (Juno Temple) and the eldest, Anne (Romula Garai) who we soon discover was adopted before the Keyes discovered they could bear children on their own. Anne is a beautiful creative actress who seems to make the family proud. The family is visited by an old friend Hector (David Tennant) who at dinner is very vocal about the fact that Hitler is a threat to England and that England must stop Hitler before he destroys them instead of pursuing a course of appeasement of Hitler that would prevent disturbance of their elegant way of life on the island of England. It is obvious that Sir Alexander is more concerned with his duties as a member of parliament and his maintenance of his family history and wealth, and his responses to Hector as well as to the mysterious Balcombe (Jeremy Northam) from the Foreign Office and the young Lawrence (Charlie Cox), a new member of the Foreign Office who is courting Anne, suggest subterfuge.

The family is visited by the very proper Aunt Elizabeth (Julie Christie) and while the entire family is on picnic, an infant transiently disappears while under Anne's care. From this point the story takes a dark turn: Anne continues filming in London with her close friend, actor Gilbert (Hugh Bonneville), and Anne discovers some phonograph records in the basement of the Keyes home, records that contain not fox trots but instead 'conversations' from meetings. Suspicions about evil derring-do arise when the family learns that Hector has committed suicide soon followed by the suicide of Gilbert and eventually the bizarre discovery of Lawrence's body among the pet animals ordered to be put to death to make the people of England more ready for abrupt changes. War with Germany begins and changes the atmosphere and results in changes in the Keyes family: Anne is imprisoned by the family because 'she is really not one of us' and unravels the harrowing mystery of the Keyes' family involvement in the dark events of the present and the past.

The mood of England of 1939 is beautifully captured by cinematographer Danny Cohen and the musical score by Adrian Johnston illustrates the dichotomy of the free-spirited Anne and the dark underpinnings of the Keyes family. Romola Garai is excellent in her treacherous role as are the other stars. Small roles by Toby Regbo, Christopher Lee, Corin Redgrave and others make this a cast rich in some of the finest British actors of the day. GLORIOUS 39 ('Glorious' is the nickname given Anne) is an enlightening film that addresses many significant issues too infrequently addressed by works of history.

Grady Harp

I always enjoy watching BBC films, always very well acted and usually an interesting story that makes you think. This one promised quite a lot: a great cast including Jeremy Northam, Bill Nighy and Romola Garay, a plot in the first year of the second world War, it seemed like a recipe for a great movie. Unfortunately may parts of the story seemed to weird to be true and in the end I didn't understand if the girl was simply crazy. Dead bodies all around her, people talking about secrets and dropping dead afterwards without a lot of explanations, her being locked up in a room and drugged, characters that appear without explanation and stare just as if it was a horror film and in the end nothing is quite clarified... Just totally mystifying...

Anne Keyes disturbingly uncovers a sinister plot without apparent motive in a story told as a flashback in a way that is helpful to its audience.

This is a very British film about guilty pasts, family values and inner strength set around the outbreak of WW2. As with much British mystery drama on screen there is a lavish dedication to quality acting, strong story telling, and brilliant cinematography. It is a compelling watch despite some plot flaws and moments when the story doesn't quite flow as convincingly as it should. But there is tension, intrigue, suspense, and menace in just the right quantities to keep us gripped and interested.

Romola Garai gives us a superbly convincing portrayal of Anne with some great support notably from Jeremy Northam (Balcombe), Sam Kubrick-Finney (young Walter), Hugh Bonnevile (Gilbert) and Juno Temple (Celia). Some familiar faces also provide strong cameos.

My one reservation about the film, and what stops me from awarding more than eight out of ten, is that it is slightly too cold, too austere, too abrupt when, perhaps, we are in need of a little warmth and camaraderie. But this is a story about the outbreak of war and the destruction heaped upon truth, privilege and family values and so it is a matter of subjective judgement. You should go and see it for Romola Garai's performance alone.

Stephen Polliakoff's work has shown some consistent concerns: two of them are a nostalgic view of the aristocratic past, and an interest in the aftermath of Nazism. These two come together in 'Glorious 39', which one may describe as a '39 Steps' kind of thriller; and in its middle portion, it's briefly gripping, albeit in a style that seems a deliberate pastiche of an earlier style of film. But overall, it's a rum beast, almost a parody of Polliakoff's earlier work. There are lines of incongruous or anachronistic dialogue, and much of the acting is exceedingly flat. Polliakof often casts Bill Nighy, and seems to order him to underact; in my opinion, all of Nighy's performances for this director are awful. The child acting is also exceedingly wooden. Ramola Garai in the lead role is OK, but she really gets almost no help; yet from the overall feel of the piece, it's hard to avoid concluding that this is intentional. The plot is incoherent and hackneyed: the good guys all want to fight the Nazis, the nasty people don't; even the use of an adopted child as the lead character seems to be a cheap way of having a cake and eating it, as it allows the director to revel in the aristocratic excess while simultaneously suggesting there was something terrible about it. The concluding scene, meanwhile, makes something out of nothing, a crescendo of music hiding the fact that there's no real drama in the ending. It's a shame, as for a number of years, Polliakoff's work was consistently interesting; but this is a mess.