Date: Fri 05-Jul-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Illustration: C

Location: A-6

Quick Words:

Cold-Comfort-Farm-Playing-Now

Full Text:

(rev "Cold Comfort Farm" for Now Playing, 7/5/96)

Now Playing-

With `Cold Comfort Farm,' Escape Summer's Usual Heat & Hype

By Trey Paul Alexander III

Although I avoid reading reviews of films I'm about to see (the better for

keeping me from being predisposed to others' opinions and not my own), rarely

do I walk into a theatre uninformed or unaware of the type of movie I am about

to see. But such was the rare case with Cold Comfort Farm , an unusual little

film which has been playing at Crown Cine in Danbury.

To be quite honest, I am at a loss to describe this British flick, a sly

comedy slinging cutting, satirical barbs every which way, all while its cast

induces the audience to succumb to its charms as if it were a proper lark of a

flick. But most important, this is a movie to which one must give their

attention and patience, a practice not commonly used during our absorption of

the flurry of films that gets released during the summer (wherein it typically

takes less than five minutes before disaster hits, someone is killed, weapons

are brandished or a gimmick is pulled).

Based on a 1932 novel by Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm tells of a flighty

young socialite from London, Flora Poste (Kate Beckinsale), who has recently

been orphaned and contemplates a career as a writer. Flora fancies herself to

be the next Jane Austen, and to that end plots to take up residence with the

most eccentric set of relatives she can find, hoping they will provide her an

abundance of material for her masterpiece work of the future.

Such a wealth of references is found in the company of her cousins, the

Starkadders, who live on a decaying farm in Sussex appropriately named Cold

Comfort. Flora's curiosity is particularly piqued by her gloomy cousin, Judith

Starkadder (a wonderfully morose Eileen Atkins), who vows of atoning for the

hideous, yet unmentioned, crime her husband committed upon Flora's father (in

fact, Flora, once in the company of the Starkadders, finds herself constantly

referred to as "Robert Poste's child," as if to continuously invoke the ghost

of wrongs past).

Before long, Flora discovers the farm to be populated by a host of colorful

characters, including Judith's over-sexed son (she is constantly calling down

curses upon her "troublesome libertine"), a curmudgeonly family preacher (Ian

McKellen), and a mysterious old woman who lives upstairs in solitude, yet

rules ominously over the household with threats of curses and a menacing

warning that she saw something hideous in the woodshed.

The early reference in the film to Jane Austen emerges as a vibrant subtext

within the movie and looms within much of the proceedings. Just as Austen was

concerned with issues of manners and class, Cold Comfort Farm is much the

comedy of manners with a clash of cultures between the rustic farmers and the

high-society waif who comes to live with them. But also within Flora are

elements of Austen's Emma, as Flora quickly becomes involved in the lives of

the Starkadders and sets out to change their country ways.

Due to all the recent cinema adaptations of Austen's work, this aspect of the

film jumps off the screen and into our attentions. Less obvious, but more

intended, is a satire of D.H. Lawrence, the skewered subject of Gibbons'

novel. Admittedly out of touch with Lawrence's ouvre, I was slow to ferret out

the many jabs at Lawrence, which begin from the opening sequence (which

introduce's Flora's friend and confidante, Mrs Smiling, and thus begins an

often hilarious gag of employing names and dialogue that tweak Lawrence and

his ilk).

Cold Comfort Farm is rated PG and includes little profanity but some sexually

suggestive dialogue and innuendo. As a fan of cinema escapism, I am the last

one to criticize summer movies, but this film is a welcome respite from the

mega-hyped vehicles populating the season.