Dir.: Peter Cattaneo; Cast: Kristin Scott-Thomas, Sharon Horgan, India Ria Amateifio, Gaby French, Amy James-Kelly, Greg Wise, Lara Rossi; UK 2019, 112 min.
Since his breakout success with The Full Monty (1997) Peter Cattaneo has made more low key features, switching his talents to TV in the past decade. Military Wives is another crowd-pleaser, scantily clad men replaced by singing spouses of soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. Written by Rosanna Flynn and Rachel Tunnard, Military Wives has a few flickers of authenticity, following in the wake of the BBC series The Choir, which sees 2000 military spouses singing in 74 choirs nationwide.
The battle here is between posh colonel’s wife Kate (a brilliant Scott-Thomas), still mourning the loss of her son on the last Afghanistan tour, and tipple-loving Lisa (Horgan) who runs the local convenience shop on the army premises. Somehow the idea of a choir becomes a reality with Jess (French) shining as a stunning soloist. Lisa has trouble keeping daughter Frankie (Amateifio) under control. Meanwhile Kate’s husband (Wise) is injured in the first throes of the campaign and is flown back to base. Seeing as it’s the 20th century, a straight talking lesbian hairdresser (Rossi) is par for the course, and doleful Sarah (James-Kelly) plays the token widow. But chin-up and carry on: it will all be ok in the Royal Albert Hall, despite a verbal catfight between Lisa and Kate just before they get on the road. Essentially this is a series of episodic highlights emblematic of the empty, formulaic and manipulative script that panders shamelessly to the troops support, saved by a brilliant cast, Military Wives slightly overstays its welcome but will go down a treat on the frontline, and in the shires. AS
ON RELEASE FROM FRIDAY 6 MARCH 2020
https://youtu.be/7FR5TJwXft8