This was a lovely film that was steady and heart touching. Books are my favourite and this film had many of them. Wish there were more film like this nowadays and it had the touch of manners and decorum thats often lost to time. It was refreshing.

Set in a small town in 1959 England, it is the story of a woman who decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop, a decision which becomes a political minefield. Despite a very talented cast 'The Bookshop' fails to captivate it's viewers but also give it's actors the benefit of a doubt since not even them can save the terribly written script and the very slow and dragged plot that occurs. The storyline was also nothing very interesting to begin with and in the end a film that you can easily forget in a matter of minutes perhaps seconds.

In 1959, Florence Green (Emily Mortimer) buys the dilapidated 'Old House' in the small coastal town of Hardborough, East Anglia, takes over the unsold stock of a business in London that has closed, and opens a bookshop. Reading is not a past-time that's widely popular in Hardborough. The townsfolk are convinced that the bookshop of kind-hearted Mrs Green, widowed during World War II, will fail - not for economic reasons or lack of readers but because the formidable, ruthless and vindictive Mrs Violet Gamart (Patricia Clarkson), self-appointed patroness of all public activities in the town, wants 'Old House' to be an Arts and Cultural Centre. Florence does have supporters. There's young Christine (Honor Kneafsey), worldly beyond her years, who helps out after school; and Edmund Brundish (Bill Nighy), the local squire, a voracious reader and Florence's best customer. The film moves at a leisurely pace. A pace that allows us time to appreciate whatever is on the screen, be it conflict, embarrassment, unresolved tension or moments of reflection. A pace that allows time for the cinematographer (Jean-Claude Larrieu) to linger on water, trees, fields and tall grass wavering in the wind. Isabel Coixet, the director, wrote the screenplay which she based on a novel by Penelope Fitzgerald. The movie - filmed in County Down, Northern Ireland and Barcelona, Spain - won three of Spain's Goya Awards (best film; best director; best adapted screenplay) earlier this year. The cast performs magnificently. Florence: naïve, courageous, and trusting; Christine: precocious and determined; Edmund: reclusive and supportive; Violet: persuasive, highly motivated, and effective. This painfully tender movie - rigorously unsentimental - wormed its way into my affections. It's a film that touches the emotions with an ending that's bitter-sweet.

I wanted to like this film, I really did. Its nicely set, the costumes and the feeling of the time and place are quite accurate. The story is ok. Its just so very flat a film. I don't mind slowly paced films, but to make up for the lack of pace they need to be charming, or witty, or nuanced.....or at the very least original. All through this film I thought of Chocolat. Similar premise in both, but Chocolat is better scripted, acted and directed. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with The Bookshop, it just underwhelms. Maybe I should have watched it on a lazy Sunday afternoon, it passes the time harmlessly. A bit like a BBC period drama.