Sprightly tale cultivates smiles

By STEVE PERSALL

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 31, 2000

Marijuana takes center stage along with Brenda Blethyn in Saving Grace, but this is no stoner flick.

Saving Grace is a breath of fresh air, if you don't mind a little marijuana smoke mixed in.

Okay, a lot of marijuana smoke. But this isn't some Cheech and Chong stoner flick. It's a sprightly tale of a middle-aged woman who decides that turning kilos of pot into British pounds is the best way to save her bankrupt estate. Grace Trevethen is the most unlikely dope dealer you could imagine.

She's a recent widow, fiftyish, and as fragile as the orchids she pampers in her greenhouse. The only pot she knows well is made of clay. Grace is also losing her home, since her deceased husband fell from an airplane without a parachute and left a stack of debts behind. With the help of her gardener, Matthew (co-writer Craig Ferguson), Grace turns botany into an illegally cultivated bonanza.

Brenda Blethyn plays Grace, and that's an apt description of her performance. Too often cast as an ear-shattering nag (Secrets and Lies, Little Voice), Blethyn has a role here urging her to tone it down and allow her age-experienced face to do more than serve as a megaphone. Grace is written as a sympathetic character, but it's Blethyn the actor who moves us beyond that into amused empathy.

Director Nigel Cole opens his film in one of those quaint British villages where everybody is adorably eccentric -- something along the lines of The Full Monty and Waking Ned Devine. The quirks here are based on knowledge, or lack thereof, about Grace's joint venture with Matthew.

Doctors are co-conspirators, the vicar and constable are clueless, and two giddy old hens think Grace has devised a new brand of tea. As expected, there is a scene showing these citizens deliriously buzzed from Grace's potent stash, including brief, comical nudity. The path taken to get there, a series of well-intended blunders, keeps Saving Grace afloat.

Ferguson and co-writer Mark Crowdy keep the misunderstandings going at a nice pace and occasionally drop in a brilliantly absurd line or setting. Ferguson is best known as a TV comedian (The Drew Carey Show), and that glib influence is detected in lines about the police chasing salmon poachers or a debate on the comedy merits of Kafka and Jacqueline Susann. The ending is too pat for some tastes, but this is a pipe dream, you know.

The marijuana angle is handled with only a whiff of advocacy, although you can anticipate some awed respect for corn dog-sized buds and hydroponic harvests that could be High Times magazine centerfolds. This isn't some effort to make such illegal trade seem like loads of fun (Half-Baked) or some neo-cowboy myth (Homegrown). Grace tries the stuff only once and doesn't appreciate the aftereffects.

This is strictly business that she humorously tries to carry out herself in one sequence, a prim, white-dressed figure amid the graffiti grime of London's Portobello Road district. That leads to an encounter with a drug lord (Tcheky Karyo), part David Lynch and part David Letterman.

The wacky stuff is balanced by a handful of serious scenes, most notably a tea time discussion between Grace and her husband's lover (Jamie Foreman). The soap opera outline has a dash of levity, keeping the film buoyant even as it reaches into emotional depths. A subplot involving Matthew and his pregnant, pragmatic girlfriend (Valerie Edmond) has just enough tension and storybook fantasy to work.

Saving Grace is a minor film in the long run, yet it's an agreeably potent comedy. The effects wear off quickly, but moviegoers should come away with a positive buzz.

Saving Grace

• Grade: B
• Director: Nigel Cole
• Cast: Brenda Blethyn, Craig Ferguson, Martin Clunes, Tcheky Karyo, Jamie Foreman
• Screenplay: Craig Ferguson, Mark Crowdy
• Rating: R; drug abuse, brief nudity, profanity
• Running time: 96 min.

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