Movie Review - Cold Comfort Farm

Cold Comfort Farm (1995) - Young Flora Poste (Kate Beckinsale) finds herself orphaned and with only 100 pounds income a year.  Her solution?  To live with (and off of) her distant relatives.  Somewhat to her chagrin the likeliest candidate is a distant branch of the family who claim that they wronged her father.  The Starkadders (Eileen Atkins, Ian McKelln, and Rufus Sewell among others) invite her to Cold Comfort Farm for a chance to make good on that wrong.  What she discovers there is a dour family focused on curses, death and sin.  Flora's relentless cheerfulness fights back little by little.

Based on 1930s novel of the same name by Stella Gibbons the story is a parody of a popular genre of the day.  Those novels played on what was seen as the strangeness and sorrow of country life.  The movie has the feel of  a parody of modern BBC's series.  Which is rather amusing given that this was a BBC made for TV movie.

So what is so appealing about this movie?  It is the fine detail given to each and every character.  These are characters that need that detail to be more than cartoon characters.  They are weird and idiosyncratic and eccentric and utterly delightful.  The Starkadders are never allowed to slip into caricature.  These are real people trapped in an unreal story.  And Flora will free them, each in their own way.

So much fun.

Rating - **** Recommended