Worth: $15.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Eddie Izzard, Judi Dench, Carla Juri, Jim Broadbent
Intro:
...grips when needed, its examination of British culpability gives the story a reason to be told, and it makes a surprisingly effective argument for Eddie Izzard as working-class spy hero.
New ground is a difficult thing to find when it comes to cinema set during World War II. But writers Eddie Izzard and Celyn Jones (along with co-writer/director Andy Goddard) seem to have found something a little different here with the setting of Augusta Victoria College, a British finishing school in Bexhill-on-Sea that housed and educated daughters of the Nazi High Command.
As we follow Thomas Miller (Eddie Izzard), a teacher taking up a vacancy at the school after his predecessor mysteriously disappeared, we are shown one of the more subtle avenues of war, even before WWII began in earnest: Infiltration. A school designed to allow those with ties to Hitler’s inner circle to quietly seed into British society, with headmistress Miss Rocholl (Judi Dench in fine form once again) going along with the salutes and rhetoric for reasons that would be pitiable if they didn’t reverberate in Nazi apologia today. And as teacher Ilse’s (Carla Juri) role in the school becomes clearer, the film highlights how this sort of indoctrination ramps upwards from the seemingly-benign, looking all well and good until one day they decide to break out the phrenology.
It’s a solid backdrop for a story all about deception and double/triple-crosses, with Izzard at the centre of a spy caper that is thankfully removed from both the British gentleman and American action spy standards. Its tone is akin to a le Carré adaptation, with Thomas Miller working against the clock to get valuable information to British Intelligence, while simultaneously keeping comparable information out of German hands. Izzard gets punched, thrown, shot, does quite a lot of physical exertion (to the point where she gives Ethan Hunt a… run… for his money), and it all manages to stick.
Part of that is down to the pacing as well, keeping things good and tense right from the start as we see the last moments of Miller’s predecessor. Andy Goddard may be better known for Downton Abbey and his work on the Doctor Who and Marvel Netflix media universes, but he does justice to both historical and geographical settings, possibly more so than the script would’ve allowed on its own.
But even with the rawness of the writing, which isn’t as incisive as it could’ve been given the subject matter (which puts a spin on the recurring “If it weren’t for us, you’d all be speaking in German” post-war narrative), it’s still quite effective as an espionage thriller. It grips when needed, its examination of British culpability gives the story a reason to be told, and it makes a surprisingly effective argument for Eddie Izzard as working-class spy hero. Hopefully she doesn’t abandon the post, or the pen, anytime soon.
