Film Review: The Girl in the Cafe (2005)

Remember those old 1930′s-era films where Awkward Boy and Even More Awkward Girl Meet Cute, engage in shy but memorable repartee, fall in love, endure all sorts of challenges that threaten to tear them apart, but then end up walking off into a black-and-white sunset together?

Well, The Girl in the Cafe isn’t one of those films.

It’s so much more. Seriously. So. Much. More.

Richard Curtis penned the screenplay, and right off the bat you’re probably thinking, Oh, yes, isn’t he the guy who brought Bridget Jones’ Diary to full, funny bloom on the big screen? Who also wrote Notting Hill, Love Actually, and the movie that made his name here in the U.S., Four Weddings and a Funeral (which I saw four times in the theatres when it first came out)?

Why, yes, that would be one and the same Richard Curtis. He’s known for that singular, “quirky” British humor, unusual couples, fantastic soundtracks, and a sort of Greek chorus of friends and family members always hovering near the edges in all his romantic comedies. What would Four Weddings and a Funeral have been without Gareth, Fiona, Matthew, Tom, David, and Scarlett, after all? Bloody dull, that’s what. Or what in the world would Bridget have done without her coat of armor, otherwise known as her trio of ever-loyal friends, Jude, Shazza and Tom? Just another film about a self-loathing woman on the hunt for a man and a diet that actually works.

Still, if you remember your Curtis filmography, you’ll notice a slight difference in his latest films. Especially in Love Actually, one of the saddest/happiest love stories of the past decade, he managed to pull off several challenging feats: keep a half-dozen romances going on simultaneously without confusing the audience; supply a feel-good ending for the whole of the film, even though not everyone ended up with the person of their dreams; and, most interestingly, throw in some international politics in the mix, with Billy Bob Thornton as the smarmy U.S. President getting his comeuppance in the end from the newly transformed (and newly in love) British PM, played beautifully by the now mature Hugh Grant, who thankfully has given up playing shy-clumsy-floppy-haired types.

Watching Love Actually, you get the feeling in those particular scenes that Curtis wanted to say more about the tension, both on- and off-screen between the Brits and their bigger, stronger cousins, the Americans, but he wisely chose to stick to the standard romance-comedy script and instead settled on giving Grant a nice, pro-U.K. speech to remind the audience of the continued relevance of the Brits without beating them over the head with it. And then we all got to cry and laugh when he ended up with the girl and [almost] everyone else had their happy endings. Roll credits.

In The Girl in the Cafe, however, an HBO Films production released in 2005, he holds no such reservations. Curtis has a statement to make about his view of the world, and by golly, he’s going to make it.

Bill Nighy, a sensitive, brilliant actor and Love Actually alum (he played the aging rock star, Billy Mack, who incongruously scored a hit with his bastardized cover of “Love is All Around,” itself the love theme from Four Weddings and a Funeral), plays Lawrence, a lonely workaholic whose life revolves around his job with the British government and his tidy but soulless apartment. The film opens by introducing us to Lawrence’s quiet, uneventful life, from the moment he wakes up in the morning to the gray drudgery of his day at the office.

The one treat he occasionally allows himself is a cup of tea at the cafe. One afternoon, in a rare break from his relentless workload, he finds himself sharing a table with an equally quiet and shy Scottish girl named Gena (a luminous Kelly MacDonald). It’s the traditional Meet Cute, with so many pauses, bumbling attempts at conversation and painfully nervous glances across the table that you can’t help but cringe. in total recognition. It’s something we’ve all gone through at one time or another, that eternal hour at a party, meeting or restaurant where you’re forced to share intimate space with someone you’ve never met.

Of course, this being a Richard Curtis film, the dialogue — however uncomfortable — shines, even at its bleakest moments, and Lawrence scores a few little laughs that endear him not just to Gena but to the audience as well. When he asks her out to lunch in a hilarious attempt at being casual, it’s not surprising that she acquieses. He’s a sixty-year-old virgin, but he’s not graceless. It’s easy to see that he’s a nice, perhaps even interesting guy, the kind you wouldn’t look at twice on the street, but one you wouldn’t mind spending a pleasant hour or two with over a good meal and a few glasses of wine. In a way he’s what you would imagine what Charles (Grant’s character in Four Weddings) would have been like had he not ended up with Andie MacDowell’s Carrie but instead had grown old and alone instead. Solid, dependable, a little ungainly, but otherwise a stand-up kind of guy.

As it turns out, of course, neither of them is what they really appear. Lawrence isn’t just an anonymous, foppish bookkeeper in the civil service; he’s a senior financial advisor to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and is about to head to Reykjavik, Iceland, with his boss and colleagues to attend the all-important G-8 summit meeting. And Gena, the self-described “student of sorts,” isn’t quite the aimless cafe-dweller he thought she was either. When Lawrence invites her to join him in Reykjavik, little did he know how much his ordinary life would change forever, and how exactly it would change.

Curtis juggles bigger issues here than Boy Meets Girl. He has great ambitions for this film, not just to bring these two unlikely souls together but to make a powerful statement about nothing less than the state of the world. Really. And while one can argue that he may hold a simplistic — dare I say unrealistic? — view of geopolitics and the complex issues of hunger and the international economy, he addresses just that criticism right in the film itself, through both Gena and Lawrence. To his credit, though, although his two leads find themselves in a conflict even greater and more daunting than the age and class differences that divide them, they’re never overshadowed by any of it. They’re personifications of Curtis’ convictions, but they maintain their integrity as fully drawn, complex characters fumbling around in a desperate search for love and redemption.

What I loved most about the film was that while it begins modestly, it ends on literally the world’s stage. The story becomes more than just about Lawrence and Gena, and while one might try and label it as a romantic comedy, you realize partway through that Curtis won’t be satisfied with simply answering the question of whether or not Lawrence or Gena end up together in the end, ready to walk off into a colorized sunset.

And perhaps, if he did his job well, neither will you. In fact, as you watch the credits roll in the end, you may realize that, just maybe, the end doesn’t depend at all on Lawrence and Gena. It may actually depend on you.

Go see it. Please. You can thank me later.

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