The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, is a British movie that I don't think was ever released in theaters in the United States, it just went straight to streaming services. I knew of the book on which it was based from a while back, and thought I had a pretty good hang on what it was about. 'The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society' was a society on the English isle of Guernsey during Nazi occupation, I thought that maybe it met secretly, possibly in part to sabotage the Germans. I was expecting a pretty straight forward story about the societies activates during the occupation, this is a fictional story by the way, I knew that, but I was not expecting the framing story.

The framing story concerns an author in search of something to write (Lily James) who by happenstance makes contact with one of the societies members about a year or so after the end of the war. She goes to visit the society, and stumbles onto a mystery, which makes for a more structurally interesting why of conveying the war time plot. It's a romance with a rich sense of place and diverse and likable characters. The anglophile nerd in me wishes I could be as well versed in English lit as some of the characters in this story, and have passionately held opinions about which of the Bronte sisters was the better writer. Alas, unless I'm hard up for entertainment under a prolonged occupation that is likely never to be. This is a likable flick however, very English, very Mike Newell doing the Merchant and Ivory thing. Even if you think you might be better then it, it will pull you in. ***1/2