Director:
Nigel Cole (2000)
Cast:
Brenda Blethyn, Craig Ferguson, Martin Clunes.
The
Story
Set
in the beautiful misty fishing town of Port Liac in Cornwall England,
SAVING GRACE--an easy-going comic gem--centers on Grace Trevethan (Brenda
Blethlyn), a sweet and modest middle-aged lady, whose husband commits
suicide, leaving her with his grave financial problems. While real estate
agents from London prey on Grace, trying to take away her home to settle
the debts, she and her faithful gardener, Matthew (Craig Ferguson),
devise a plan to grow enough marijuana in her greenhouse to break even.
Wiring the greenhouse with super-bright growing lamps that cause the
locals to wear sunglasses at night, having the ladies for "tea"
resulting in fits of laughter and silly behavior, and pulling the wool
over the local vicar's eyes, the whole town gets involved in this secret
"joint venture." Once Grace harvests her crop, she hits the
high road to London as a pusher, trying to sell the dope to a major
dealer and cash out. Director Nigel Cole has hit the nail on the head
with this film. The musical score from Mark Russell has a folky, feel-good
beat, and the careful filming is colorful and clear. Never once does
SAVING GRACE frown on its illegal subject matter, which makes its story
all the more entertaining.
ACTIVITIES
FOR EOI STUDENTS
1st
and 2nd year students.
Read
the following synopsis and fill in the blanks with the words given.
Two-time
Oscar nominee Brenda Blethyn stars ____________(1) Grace Trevethen,
whose late husband jumped out of a plane ____________ (2) a parachute.
Grace has been left with a manor on the Cornish ____________ (3) and
the mountain of debt her ____________ (4) had been secretly amassing.
Now, Grace is faced with the prospect of losing ____________ (5). Desperate
times call for desperate measures, so ____________ (6) Grace is asked
to tend an ailing, if ____________ (7), plant belonging to the manor's
caretaker, she gets an ____________ (8) . Why not use her renowned green
thumb to make ____________ (9) serious money and pay off ____________
(10) debts?.
ILLICIT
AS EVERYTHING WITHOUT HER WHEN HUSBAND IDEA COAST SOME
3rd,
4th and 5th year students.
Read
the following comments about the film and answer the following questions.
"The
idea behind Saving Grace is that when you think your world is completely
falling apart, it might just be the best thing that ever happened to
you", explains co-writer Craig Ferguson, who also stars as the
mischievous Scottish caretaker Matthew. "It's really about never
giving up".Producer Mark Crowdy and Ferguson joined forces to write
a story based on Crowdy's inspired idea: what would happen if a genteel
but bankrupt British widow's only means of income was a secret garden
of expertly cultivated cannabis? Crowdy and Ferguson began to work out
how Grace Trevethen comes to be an outlaw and what transpires as her
small Cornish village slowly becomes aware of her less-than-legal activities.Saving
Grace was shot mainly on England's enchanting Cornish coast - the farthest
coastal tip of Britain where rugged isolation lends the landscape an
air of stark beauty and the local people a sense of free-spirited whimsy.
It's a part of England sometimes compared to America's Wild West, where
working-class fishermen mingle easily with those born to the manor.
Here, the terrain itself mirrors Grace's initial state of being - sheltered,
remote, high - spirited yet cut off from the rest of Britain. And then
of course there was the business of authentically creating Grace's garden
in Cornwall. "We knew that plastic plants wouldn't do at all",
explains Mark Crowdy. "We needed the plants to be absolutely real
so after much finagling we became perhaps the first feature film ever
to get actual Crown dispensation to use actual hemp plants".
-
What is the moral of the film?
-
Why was Cornwall chosen as the perfect set for the story?
-
Which is particularly amazing about the shooting?
