Conference bookie::movies

1025.0. "Margaret's Museum" by CTHU26::S_BURRIDGE (cheerful, charming odd-job man) Fri Feb 02 1996 08:31

    This split most of the prizes at the recent Genie awards (Canadian
    "Oscars") with "Le Confessionnal."  Helena Bonham Carter won as Best
    Actress, and Kate Nelligan as Best Supporting Actress.
    
    The film is set in the Cape Breton coal mining town of Glace Bay, in
    the late 1940s.  Bonham Carter plays a young woman whose father and
    brother were killed in a mining accident, who is determined not to
    marry a miner.  She is wooed and won by a tall young man who plays the
    bagpipes and was fired from the mine for refusing to speak English to
    the foreman, preferring Gaelic, who builds her a house from salvaged
    and stolen wood and scrapes a living doing odd jobs.  Meanwhile, in a
    subplot, her younger brother becomes involved with the mine manager's
    daughter, and wants desperately to become a miner, the only real "man's
    job" available in the town. 
    
    Much of the movie is a rather charming love story, in an attractive and
    interesting setting.  Bonham Carter is very good, and very beautiful. 
    However, the film's sentimentality is continually undercut by the bleak 
    wit of her mother, played by Kate Nelligan.  In the end, it's a pretty
    dark story.  
    
    The performance of Kenneth Welsh, as the strong and protective Uncle
    Angus, is also notable.
    
    -Stephen