Keeping Mum

This article is about the 2005 black comedy film. For the 1997 sitcom, see Keeping Mum (TV series).
Keeping Mum

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Niall Johnson
Produced by Julia Palau
Matthew Payne
Written by Niall Johnson
Richard Russo
Starring Rowan Atkinson
Maggie Smith
Kristin Scott Thomas
Tamsin Egerton
Patrick Swayze
Emilia Fox
Music by Dickon Hinchliffe
Edited by Robin Sales
Production
company
Isle of Man Film
Azure Films
Tusk Productions
Distributed by THINKFilm
Summit Entertainment
Release dates
  • 2 December 2005 (2005-12-02)
Running time
 103 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Box office $18,575,768[1]

Keeping Mum is a 2005 British black comedy film starring Rowan Atkinson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith and Patrick Swayze.

Plot

In the opening scene, as pregnant young Rosie Jones (Emilia Fox) rides on a train, her very large trunk starts leaking blood. When questioned by the police, she calmly reveals that the two dismembered bodies inside are of her unfaithful husband and his mistress. She is then sentenced by the judge (Roger Hammond) to a secure unit for the criminally insane for manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Forty-three years later, in the village of Little Wallop, Walter Goodfellow, the vicar (Rowan Atkinson) is very busy writing the perfect sermon for a convention, having no idea about the problems in his house, which include the unfulfilled emotional needs of his wife Gloria (Kristin Scott Thomas) who subsequently starts an affair with her golf instructor, Lance (Patrick Swayze); the sexual desires and growing maturity of his teenage daughter Holly (Tamsin Egerton) who constantly picks up new boyfriends; and son Petey (Toby Parkes) who is bullied by schoolmates. Then everything changes with the arrival of the new housekeeper Grace (Maggie Smith).

Grace is installed into their lives and learns about some of the problems in the house – neighbour Mr Brown's nuisance-barking Jack Russell terrier, Clarence, who consistently disturbs Gloria's sleep; the bullying of Petey; and Gloria and Lance's affair. Grace resolves to solve these problems in her own way. She first kills Clarence the Jack Russell, and when his owner finds out that his dog has been killed, she kills him, too. She sabotages the bullies' bicycles, injuring one of them and thereby making Petey very happy. She catches the golf instructor outside the house one night, videotaping Holly undressing, and kills him with an iron. While Walter is preparing his sermon for the conference, Grace introduces him to having a sense of humour to his religion and also teaching him that he can still love his wife as well as God by drawing his attention to the erotic references in the Song of Solomon. As the problems in the household seem to be gradually clearing, Walter leaves for his convention.

Grace is discovered when Gloria and Holly see her picture on the television in a news item mentioning her release and previous offences. It is then that Grace reveals that she is Gloria's long-lost mother, Rosie Jones, explaining why she came to Little Wallop in the first place. Gloria argues that when having a problem with someone, one cannot just kill them. Grace remarks that this is the one thing she and her doctors could never agree on. Despite their disagreements, Gloria tries to help Grace remove Lance's body, but cannot face up to it. Over a cup of tea, the three women decide not to tell Walter or Petey any of what has happened.

When nagging congregant Mrs Parker (Liz Smith) comes over to discuss the problem of the church flower arranging committee, Grace, under the impression that Mrs Parker is about to turn them in, attempts to hit her over the head with a frying pan, but is prevented by Gloria. Mrs Parker, shocked by the murder attempt, has a heart attack and dies. Walter returns from the convention just then and sees Mrs Parker's body, but doesn't realise she is dead. Soon after this, Grace leaves the family when order seems to be restored among them.

At the end of the film, Walter is talking to Bob and Ted, the water works employees, about the pond at the Vicar's house. They say that there is too much algae and the pond needs to be drained. Remembering that Grace disposed of her victims in the pond, Gloria, with a disturbingly cheerful expression, offers the two men some tea. The film closes with an underwater shot depicting the bodies that had been placed in the pond, including the recently added bodies of Bob and Ted.

Cast

Filming

Filming began in February 2005. The main filming location was in the village of St Michael Penkevil in Cornwall. Locations on the Isle of Man were used for all filming outside the village. The outer shots of the train is on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, the scene with the car going over a small bridge with the train going over another is just outside Goathland (Aidensfield in Heartbeat). Domestic Total Gross: $1,619,466 Distributor:ThinkFilm Release Date:September 15, 2006

Genre: Comedy Runtime: 1 hrs. 30 min. MPAA Rating: R

Reception

Review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 56% of critics gave the film positive write-ups, based on 85 reviews. At the similar website Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 to each review, the film has received an average score of 53, based on 22 reviews.

References

  1. ↑ "Keeping Mum at Box Office Mojo". Retrieved 2010-09-29.

External links

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