The Land Girls

[1998, Movie]

The Land Girls: Review

Girl power: Anna Friel, Rachel Weisz and Catherine McCormack

An old-fashioned, character-driven melodrama set in rural England and suffused with WWII-era nostalgia. Eager to do their part for the war effort, "Land girls" Stella (Catherine McCormack), Ag (Rachel Weisz) and Prue (Anna Friel) join the Women's Land Army, which sent inexperienced recruits to pick up the farm jobs left vacant when men joined the armed forces. They're all sent to the Lawrence family farm, a damp, dreary place where hard and dirty work is the order of the day. But the girls befriend soft-spoken Mrs. Lawrence (Maureen O'Brien), win over her skeptical husband (Tom Georgeson), learn their way around chickens, plow horses and farm machinery and help one another through love, heartbreak and slopping pigs. Stella is decent, responsible and a bit of a priss, engaged to an air force officer (Paul Bettany) posted to nearby Southhampton. Smart, slightly stuck-up Ag, whose surface sophistication hides a certain inexperience, is studying to be a lawyer. And hairdresser Prue is an all-around good-time girl who loves a man in uniform -- or out of it, for that matter, since she's the first of the trio to take up with the Lawrence's son Joe (Steven Mackintosh), who's supposed to be joining the air force but doesn't seem to be in any great hurry about it. A beautifully acted and thoroughly enjoyable drama. --Maitland McDonagh

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Photo courtesy Paul Chedlow/Gramercy Pictures

The Land Girls

[1998, Movie]

The Land Girls: Review

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