Military Wives


Based on the group of ladies who contacted the BBC, leading to the excellent TV series, this is a typically British film: a successor to Calendar Girls and Brassed Off, and of course The Full Monty. It’s about what spouses do when their ‘other halves’ are fighting a war—the second Gulf War, in Afghanistan. And it’s a buddy film about the Colonel’s wife and the Regimental Sergeant Major’s wife. Kate (Kristin Scott Thomas) is the former: announcing herself immediately as important and in charge. Lisa (Sharon Horgan) is nominally in charge of morale amongst the families: she works in the base’s grocery shop and it monumentally low-key compared to Kate.

Lisa has a teenage daughter who is frustrated by life on the base; Kate and the Colonel had a son who was killed in the previous Gulf War. This is why she is focused on taking everyone’s mind of their worries: she takes to it by recommending a choir and by learning how to conduct. Kate unearths a Casio keyboard and, although she can’t read music, she encourages the wives to sing for enjoyment rather than striving for Kate’s precision.

The film manoeuvres through the problems that each character has, and the events in the war that affect them. And even though the initial singing is terrible, they get good enough to be invited to the Royal Albert Hall for the Festival of Remembrance—just as Kate and Lisa’s personalities lead to an inevitable parting of ways.


This is by no means a great film and it pales in comparison to Brassed Off (and RIP Pete Postlethwaite who made that film seem so genuine). It is however almost a public service story about those who serve and those who’re left behind. Kristin Scott Thomas is very good, showing a character who’s the very definition of a service wife keeping it going for the benefit of others. She loses some of her steeliness through exposure to events and to Lisa—and Sharon Horgan is wonderful.

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