This film was screened at the 2000 Seattle International Film Festival.

SAVING GRACE

reviewed by Mattro

Recently widowed Grace is a master gardener in a sleepy fishing town in southern England. Shortly after his funeral, Grace learns her deceased husband was a rabid financial gambler and that one of his failed business schemes included their fine ocean-view estate as collateral. She finds herself with a debt in excess of 300,000 British pounds and no marketable skills with which to earn some dough.

Matthew, her groundskeeper, is a Scottish transplant who works hard but would prefer to smoke joints and avoid responsibility. He grows marijuana plants in the woods behind the Vicar's house. Though all his friends, including the local doctor, turn to him for their joint supplies, he's not a dealer. Matthew's plants are for sharing with the locals only. When his precious plants stop budding, he calls on his boss, Grace, the plant master. She informs him the plants aren't getting enough light and need to be moved in to her greenhouse or they won't survive. Matthew is amazed when Grace is able to nurse one of the plants back to full budding within 24 hours.

Soon creditors and collection agencies are flooding Grace with mail, ringing her house incessantly and even stopping by to prepare her house for the auctioning block! She becomes desperate. In mere weeks she will lose everything, so she approaches Matthew with a plan to grow vast quantities of buds in a short amount of time.

Saving Grace is a great comedy. Brenda Blethyn is wonderful as Grace. Her innocence is as refreshing as her open-mindedness about Matthew's "hobby". Craig Ferguson, who also co-wrote the film, gives Matthew an intelligence and compassion that most pot-smoking movie characters lack. We care about what happens to him and to his friends. In fact, the thing we are least concerned with is that there is pot-smoking going on. When we laugh at the characters for being stoned, it's not because we find them pathetic in any way. We are laughing because the characters have freed themselves from their daily personas and are enjoying themselves utterly (whether they know they're stoned or not).

Director Nigel Cole keeps everything under control throughout the film (though things do get a bit slapsticky toward the end). The scenery is marvelous. The town he chose to shoot this film in is picturesque to say the least. Cole manages to wrap the film up without tacking on a laborious moral to the ending.

This is a VERY funny and intelligent film about interesting characters and very huge delicious looking marijuana buds.