Impromptu

 Impromptu 1991

• Director: James Lapine
• Based on book: no
• Cast: Judy Davis, Hugh Grant, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Julian Sands, Ralph Brown, George Corraface, Anton Rodgers, Emma Thompson, Anna Massey
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Judy Davis – Barton Fink, Passage to India
• Hugh Grant – The Gentlemen, Cloud Atlas, Music and Lyrics, American Dreamz, Love Actually, About a Boy, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Notting Hill, Sense and Sensibility, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Remains of the Day
• Mandy Patinkin – Dead Like Me, Lulu on the Bridge, Men with Guns, Dick Tracy, Ragtime
• Emma Thompson – Last Christmas, Years and Years, The Children’s Act, Alone in Berlin, Effie Gray, The Love Punch, Beautiful Creatures, Harry Potter, The Boat that Rocked, An Education, Last Chance Harvey, Stranger than Fiction, Nanny McPhee, Angels in America, Love Actually, Wit, The Winter Guest, Sense and Sensibility, In the Name of the Father, Remains of the Day, Much Ado about Nothing, Peter’s Friends, Howards End, Dead Again, Henry V, Tutti Frutti
• Anna Massey – Angels and Insects, The Mayor of Casterbridge
• Why? Emma Thompson and the music
• Seen: Once before. Now 13 June 2022      

       George Sand (Davis) is scandalous but also a famous author who has trouble with her lovers, past and present. She hears Chopin’s (Grant) music and falls in love, first with the music, then with the man. He’s timid, proper, sickly, and dismayed at her aggressive wooing but we all know he falls for it eventually.

       It’s described as a romantic comedy and it’s unbearable. Hugh Grant is absolutely wrong as Chopin and his Polish accent is ludicrous. The whole cast is wasted on this drivel. Even Emma Thompson playing, skilfully as always, a flighty shallow aristocrat.

       Poor George Sand. Poor Frederic Chopin. They must be turning in their graves.

       Yet another film that has been given many rave reviews. Alas, not from me. But because it gets a bit serious towards the end, and for the music      

2* of 5