Film Review – The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)

Based on the best-selling novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, STUDIOCANAL is pleased to announce that the beautifully moving THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY – starring Lily James and directed by Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) – out now on Digital Download (20th August 2018) and on Blu-ray
and DVD from 27th August 2018.

The film also stars Glen Powell (Everybody Wants Some, Hidden Figures), Matthew Goode (The Imitation Game, Downton Abbey), Jessica Brown Findlay (Victor Frankenstein, Downton Abbey) and Katherine Parkinson (The IT Crowd, The Boat That Rocked) with Tom Courtenay (45 Years, Doctor Zhivago) and Penelope Wilton (The BFG, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel).

Synopsis

Lily James plays free-spirited writer Juliet Ashton, who forms a life-changing bond with the delightful and eccentric Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, when she decides to write about the book club they formed during the occupation of Guernsey in WWII.

Review – contains spoilers

This is a beautiful love story. A very emotional, thought-proving film which follows the adventure of Juliet Ashton to Guernsey, shortly after the Nazis occupied this island.

It becomes clear very early on that Juliet, a successful writer, is not comfortable in the lifestyle that she now lives by, with flashbacks to the war a few years earlier it brings home what families had to go through.

Juliet then receives a letter from a man who lives on the Island of Guernsey regarding the author Lamb and explains how he found her address in the front of one of the books, and this is where the love story begins.

What starts as a mystery as to why the society is called Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie, soon becomes a mission for Juliet to find out what has happened to the founder the book club Elizabeth McKenna, who was taken by the Germans, and leaving behind Kit, a 5-year-old daughter.

All the characters are adorable and you watch the love between Juliet and Dawsey unfold, but Juliet is engaged to a very well to do American and Dawsey is the father to Kit leaving us to believe he was in a romantic relationship with Elizabeth.

As this is a romance the realisation that Juliet cannot be with Markham and Dawsey isn’t actually romantically involved with Elizabeth paves the way for the two main characters to find love.

The film is just over 2 hours long, but in my opinion didn’t feel that long, and you very quickly get wrapped up in the lives of the villagers and the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Rachael Jess

Drama, Romance | UK, 2018 | 12 | 27th August 2018 (UK)| Blu-Ray, DVD | Studiocanal | Dir.Mike Newell | Lily James, Jessica Brown Findlay, Tom Courtenay, Michiel Huisman, Katherine Parkinson, Matthew Goode

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Rachael Jess

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