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KEEPING MUM
Directed by: Niall Johnson.
Produced by: Julia Palau & Matthew Payne.
Written by: Richard Russo & Johnson, based on a story by Russo.
Director of Photography: Gavin Finney.
Edited by: Robin Sales.
Music by: Dickon Hinchliffe.
Released by THINKFilm.
Country of Origin: UK. 90 min. Rated: R.
With: Rowan Atkinson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Dame Maggie Smith, Patrick Swayze, Tamsin Egerton, Toby Parkes, Emilia Fox & Liz Smith.

When Rosemary (Emila Fox) is caught on a train with something dripping blood from her trunk, she’s arrested, tried and sentenced to a hospital for the criminally insane. Her crime: dismembering her husband and his mistress, an act she seems more than at peace with having committed.

Forty-three years later in the quiet English countryside village of Little Wallop (population 57), we meet the Goodfellows: Reverend Walter (Rowan Atkinson), the vicar of the local parish; Gloria (Kristin Scott Thomas) ,Walter’s sexually frustrated wife; daughter Holly (Tamsin Egerton), a teenaged nympomaniac; and son Petey (Toby Parkes), the target for the town’s bullies. The entire town, in fact, gets a jolt when the Goodfellows hire Grace Hawkins (AKA Rosie, now played by the wonderful Maggie Smith) as their live-in housekeeper. The picture of grandmotherly affection with her wide eyes and kindly smile, it’s telling that her name is Grace – she seeks to spread her goodwill and salvation on her new charges. But underneath it all, she’s more Serial Mom than Mary Poppins.

It doesn’t take long for Grace to see that the Goodfellows are a family in trouble. The vicar can barely handle his parishoners, in particular one annoying older woman who swears there is a conspiracy to remove her from her post as head of the flower arrangement committee. He spends so much time trying to appease everyone in the parish that he completely neglects his wife – who’s embarking on an affair with her American golf instructor, Lance (Patrick Swayze, looking so oily and tan that you expect him to slither right out of the film). Likewise, Walter’s completely disconnected from his children, especially Holly, who brings an endless array of boyfriends home and isn’t the least bit mortified when her mom catches her shagging.

So, first things first, Grace puts an end to the incessant barking of the neighbor’s dog by, well, putting an end to the dog. Now Gloria no longer has to sleep her days away because she can finally get a good night’s rest. The bullies terrorizing poor Petey are treated to a near fatal “accident” stopping them in their tracks, and Grace gives the fretful – and clueless – vicar some much needed advice in putting the spark back into his marrige. Here’s a clue: Read the Song of Solomon in the Old Testament.

Admittedly, I am a Maggie Smith fan, and this role just made me like her more. We’d hardly expect Ms. Smith to play a ruthless serial killer, and though we shouldn’t love her, she makes you believe that everything Grace does is for the family’s benefit. Yes, she’s loony, but she means well. Though Scott Thomas and Atkinson do make an odd pair, and I couldn’t quite understand why the Goodfellows needed a housekeeper when Gloria does not work, the film as a whole is devilishly fun. The audience is aware of Grace’s penchant for murder, so it’s all the more hilarious that the family is not and that this seemingly demure old woman is completely coldblooded. When Grace is told she can’t just kill people because she disapproves of them, Grace nonchalantly replies, “That’s what my doctors kept saying. It was the one thing we could never agree on.” Tanya Chesterfield
September 15, 2006