Keeping Mum
Boasting a supreme cast, this rural English tale of of a vicar’s wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) somehow drags. A craggy and swaggering Patrick Swayze is the American golf instructor who semi-sweeps her off her feet—her son’s bullied at school, her daughter’s a nympho, she longs to escape. Her husband (Rowan Atkinson) is not only ignorant of her philandering, but bumbling through his work.
He’s stable, and that’s what new housekeeper Grace (Dame Maggie Smith) wants to make clear. Grey-haired and grandmotherly, she wouldn’t hurt a fly… or would she? Demur in a particularly English way, it becomes clear Grace is hiding things… homicidal tendencies, for instance. Religiously low key for a film featuring a man of the cloth, Atkinson’s vicar ultimately triumphs.
© Skylaire Alfvegren written for and published by E! Online