Keeping Mum

Every now and again I find a film that appeals directly to my sense of humour. In general these films tend to be not as widely watched as I think they should be, to such an extent that, when I accidentally come across anyone who has seen one, I experience a moment of connection with someone I would never have been less than irritated by under most other circumstances. This particular film gave me a fun five minutes with a posh Tory boy in my English class who liked to stare at my boobs and copy my homework, like, simultaneously. They are that powerful, these films.

Keeping Mum is definitely in this category. It defines to category. Starring Kristen Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith, Rowan Atkinson and Patrick Swayze, it is pretty much a masterpiece of warped morals with a sense of humour tending toward the deeply, if comically, disturbed.

Keeping Mum is about a family with issues. Walter Goodfellow, a vicar, and his wife, Gloria, aren’t connecting, let alone having sex. Their daughter, Holly, does nothing but have sex. Enter Grace, the family’s new housekeeper and, unbeknownst to Gloria, her estranged mother. Grace is there, in her own, twist on the idea of Mary Poppins (Mary Poppins with hammer that she will use) way, to fix their lives. Just because Grace’s method of fixing happens to be murder doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.

It is surely impossible not to fall in love with this film. From the beautiful, quintessentially British village setting of Little Wallop, to the lovely, if mystified and occasionally a little useless outlook of Walter Goodfellow (seriously, how can anyone not love Rowan Atkinson? I’m convinced it’s impossible), you find yourself unable to disengage from the complicated world in which Gloria lives her life.

Every joke cracks me up (even the ones that aren’t supposed to. Religious humour, anyone?), every murder is hilarious and, maybe a little alarmingly, makes it’s own kind of sense. Afterwards my mum and I found ourselves wondering who Grace would remove from our lives if she came to stay. Don’t worry about us or anything, we were just hypothesising. 

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