Military Wives, 2019.
Directed by Peter Cattaneo.
Starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Sharon Horgan, Jason Flemyng, Greg Wise, Emma Lowndes, Gaby French.
SYNOPSIS:
With their partners serving overseas, a group of women on the home front come together to start a choir which, in turn, inspires a global movement.
It’s been over twenty years since The Full Monty, Peter Cattaneo’s politically-tinged Britcom about a group of plucky labourers from Sheffield getting their kit off to help aid the financial blow of redundancy. In a film about stripping, the film was no less revealing in its dealings with some very serious subjects, peeling away predispositions to expose prevalent, astutely-handled explorations into issues of class, unemployment, body image and even suicide.
Cattaneo’s latest, Military Wives, sticks rather rigidly to a similar blueprint, only this time replacing steelworkers with spouses and swapping the stripping for singing. Inspired by true events, the film focuses on a group of soldier’s wives who inspire a global movement when they come together to form a choir while their partners are away serving in Afghanistan. Orchestrated by Kate (Kristin Scott Thomas) and Lisa (Sharon Horgan) — two women with conflicting approaches to boosting morale in the camp — what begins as a battle to keep boredom at bay soon manifests as a vital therapeutic outlet. With the women facing fear, anxiety and grief, Cattaneo’s ear is firmly attuned to giving a voice to the unsung heroes of war whose battle is much closer to home.
In this heartfelt, heart-warming tale of contraltos and courage, sopranos and solidarity, it’s familiarity that rings loudest. The expected narrative beats all arrive on cue, accompanied by an unapologetic sentimentality that tells you exactly how to feel and exactly when to feel it, hammered home in no small way by Lorne Balfe’s moving score. Yet in its capitulation to an established formula, co-writers Rachel Tunnard and Rosanne Flynn imbue their screenplay with enough warmth and charm to fill the Royal Albert Hall twice over.
A dusting of light-hearted humour permeates the film’s less sincere moments that, while never quite laugh-out-loud, are elevated by the effortless chemistry of its two leads. The quintessential unlikely duo, the ever-reliable Thomas cuts a cold yet sympathetic figure as Kate, while Horgan’s gift for brittle comedy gives Lisa’s laid-back demeanour the perfect foil to her counterpart’s by-the-bookishness.
While it might do very little to shakeup a decades-old, tried and tested recipe, Military Wives seems more than content in not even attempting to. Happy to bask in its shameless conventionality — rendering it unlikely to garner the same celebrated longevity of The Full Monty — Cattaneo’s film is an irrefutable crowd pleaser. It hits (nearly) all the right notes at exactly the right time. And when it’s done, the first thing you’ll want to do is hold the person next to you in a warm, lengthy embrace.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
George Nash is a freelance film journalist. Follow him on Twitter via @_Whatsthemotive for movie musings, puns and cereal chatter.
