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, althoug...