The Girl in the Café

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Girl in the Café
Directed by	David Yates
Written by	Richard Curtis
Starring	Bill Nighy, Kelly Macdonald
Release date(s)	June 25, 2005
Running time	94 min.
Language	English/French
Budget	~ ?
IMDb profile

The Girl in the Café is an Emmy Award-winning British one-off television drama, produced by independent production company Tightrope Pictures for BBC Wales, and originally screened on BBC One in the UK on Saturday June 25, 2005. It was also shown in the United States on cable television station Home Box Office, on the same day. It tells the story of a civil servant, Lawrence, working for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who falls in love with Gina, a young woman who he meets by chance in a London café.

1 Overview
2 Critical reception
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Overview

Lawrence takes Gina to a G8 summit in Reykjavík, Iceland, where she confronts the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom over the issue of third world debt and poverty in Africa, much to Lawrence's embarrassment and the anger of his employers. However, he realises that she is right, and tries to help persuade the Chancellor and others at the summit to do something about the issues concerned.

The Girl in the Café was written by Richard Curtis and directed by David Yates. Bill Nighy played Lawrence, with Kelly Macdonald as Gina. Nighy and Macdonald had previously starred together in the 2003 BBC serial State of Play, which was also directed by David Yates, and produced by Hilary Bevan-Jones, who also produced The Girl in the Café. State of Play was written by Paul Abbott, whose production company Tightrope made The Girl in the Café, on which he acted as an executive producer. The main supporting cast included Ken Stott as the Chancellor, Anton Lesser as George and Corin Redgrave as the Prime Minister.

The production was conceived to tie-in both with the BBC's Africa Lives season of programming, and with the global Make Poverty History campaign, for which writer Curtis was a prominent campaigner. As such, it was also shown in South Africa on the same day as its UK and US premieres. Curtis was better-known as a writer of romantic comedy films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually (the latter of which he also directed, and had featured Nighy). Although The Girl in the Café does contain some of his trademark comedy elements, it is generally more serious in tone and attempts to highlight the issues of poverty and fair trade.

[edit] Critical reception

On BBC One, the programme gained a reasonable audience of 5.5 million, a 29% share of the total television audience watching over its ninety minute duration, winning its timeslot.^[1] The reviews, however, were generally negative.^{[citation needed]} "No one among a first rate cast seemed sure if they were in a lightweight film with a heavyweight theme or a heavyweight film with lightly drawn characters," Andrew Anthony wrote in The Observer. "The tone was strangely solemn and the atmosphere cold, as though the film-makers had done a crash course in serious European cinema and decided that the key to its success was stilted conversation... There will be those who will argue that the normal critical judgments ought not to apply when the cause is so worthy. But drama is no more exempt from protest than economics."¹

Sarah Vine in The Times was more positive, feeling that the cast performed well but the message overwhelmed the story. "Lawrence takes Gina to the G8 summit (for dramatic purposes relocated to Iceland), where the Chancellor and his aides are preparing to argue, in the usual over-blown diplomatic way, that the rulers of the leading eight nations should “make poverty history”. Naturally, there is opposition, in particular from the Americans (who were not actually dressed as demons, but might as well have been)... Stitching an issue such as world poverty into a rom-com is no mean feat. Nevertheless, The Girl in the Café had one unforgivable and entirely avoidable flaw: oversimplification. Presenting a complex issue in such a one-dimensional way is not only patronising, it also devalues the message. Michael Moore-ism has its place in this world, but not on the BBC, and not at the taxpayer’s expense."²

However, there were also more positive views. Previewing the programme before transmission, Sarah Crompton was very enthusiastic when writing for The Daily Telegraph. "Though I am convinced by the need to take radical action against extreme poverty, I recognise that others are doubtful. But what I find so moving about The Girl in the Café... is its absolute belief in the power of drama to transform thinking."³

Macdonald and Nighy were both nominated at the 2006 Golden Globe Awards for their performances in the production, while the film and Macdonald received Emmy wins.