The Bookshop

"Sanish director Isabel Coixet (The Secret Life of Words and Learning to Drive) adapts Penelope Fitzgerald's novel with a great cast in a ho-hum film. It’s 1959 in the fictional English seaside town of Hardborough. Spirited widow Florence (a mischievous Emily Mortimer) turns a dilapidated old house into a bookshop. Despite the opposition of local shopkeepers, led by busy-body Mrs Gamart (brought to obnoxious life by Patricia Clarkson), the bookshop thrives."

"A fine, sensitive leading turn from Emily Mortimer helps shore up these quiet, lightly dust-covered proceedings, but can't quite put "The Bookshop" in the black."

"It doesn't help that the film is pulverised by wall-to-wall narration."

"Coixet's script is a long way off perfect, but it's the least of her problems; the second least is the film's dirge of a score, but even that's a bummer."

"A fine advertisement for its namesake. Buy the book and stay home."

"Ironically, given the subject, the script is stilted, with actors often stuck on pause and not even the silver-tongued Nighy able to coax more than a laugh or two from his lines."

"Its subversive undercurrent, embodied in fine performances by Emily Mortimer and Bill Nighy, is what makes it really interesting."

"Not to put too fine a point on it, but it does get you in, and has subtle strengths which are not initially apparent."