How the socially awkward saved the world
I’m not sure how I originally came across the movie, The Girl in the Cafe, but it’s a 2005 film that’s been “on tour” these past few years, passed about from house to house all over the planet. I don’t know why they don’t just post it online and solicit viewer opinions that way, but I received it recently and here’s my take on it.
The premise: It’s a May-December romance between a senior number cruncher with very few social skills and a young woman who has just gotten out of jail. They meet in - guess - a cafe, and she tells him she’s a “student of sorts.” They share a few dates together and then he invites her on holiday for a weekend in Iceland, albeit to the prestigious - and apocryphal - G8 summit in Reykjavik.
Somehow, the film would have you believe a romance flowers from that. Yet I do not see any credible sparks fly between the two, regardless of the 30-year age difference. However, Bill Nighy does play a lonely, self-effacing bureaucrat quite well, and Kelly MacDonald is absolutely lovely to look at and listen to. As one YouTuber commented, “her [Scottish] accent is sexy as hell!”
Two elements I found that were quite disturbing: one, the lack of diplomacy Gina (MacDonald) possesses regarding her incessant need to speak her mind regardless of who it endangers, and two, the lack of a real ending.
Now, call me American, but I like a good Hollywood ending. I want the good to triumph over the evil and love to conquer all. However, good and love kind of left the building and went out for a spot of tea, because the movie just peters out. Maybe the lack of satisfaction was supposed to be artistic. However, it just left me to have to craft my own conclusion, complete with soaring orchestral fanfare and the comfort that poverty WOULD be eliminated shortly. And of course, the odd couple living happily ever after. That’s the ending I would have wanted, that would have justified Gina’s repeated verbal attacks upon the summit, no matter how well deserved.
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