This is a lovely story, lovely, but not a well-turned out film. I’m so disappointed because the idea is wonderful, but the end result not so much, no.
Penelope is in love with her poor music teacher Richard but her parents give her to wealthy Jonathan, who is looking for a wife. Because he has to, but neither of them is in love. Then he starts a relationship with their butler George, in secret because they hang gay people around there; she finds out and wants to confront them, but isn’t sure what to say. Then their gardener dies and the brilliant George hires Richard! She’s quite happy about it, indeed; she goes with Richard where the other two men go to be together and she acts like it’s all perfectly alright so they start getting comfortable together and drop all pretenses, and start living more freely even inside the house. They’re all happier now so they’re kinder to the two maids as well and they’re all happy, until Penelope gets sick and they all worry about her very much, but she gets better and the six of them now know they all love each other and keep living together and raise her baby with love.
Such a beautiful story, but the telling of it was not as good.
Point 1: Penelope, George and Jonathan sounded very much like those ‘learn English’ videos; point 2: George and Jonathan’s story was too sudden, no idea when or how it started, especially with a character like Jonathan; point 3: it’s so annoying and unpleasant that he would insult her and try to separate her from Richard when he knew perfectly well that he had cheated first; point 4: it’s lovely that Jonathan cares for her at the end, but that is also sudden because there was no warning before her illness, and the laughing all together doesn’t count because he was happy near George and she near Richard, not near each other; point 5 the ritual done by George to ‘cure’ her is so silly and absurd, presented like ‘something we didn’t know about him’… meaning what, that he’s a magical healer? Nonsense.
I hope I’m not offending anyone here, because even if it were taken from something real, in this film what I saw was nonsense.
It says at the end that the dialogues were improvised by the actors, but internet also says they rehearsed for a long time so they sort of had a script by the end, they simply didn’t pay someone else to write it.
How these characters had fun was rather silly too, running barefoot and wildly.
Sadly indeed I would not watch it again because even if the idea is lovely the execution is very much flawed and not emotional in any way, even the scene when George wants to quit his job because he feels Jonathan is distancing himself is not really touching like it should have been… I’d really like it if someone made another go at this scandalous four idea, but taking it seriously, like professionals instead of amateurs.
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