The nice people at Virgin Media offered us two preview tickets to see Philomena, Judi Dench’s latest flick. The advanced screening was at our local Odeon Multiplex which isn’t my venue of choice – too Las Vegas lounge for my liking. I prefer Cinema City, a nice bar-restaurant with a picture house attached. But, it would have been rude to refuse a freebie. Based on true events, the film is about an elderly Irish woman trying to find the son she was forced to give up to the nasty nuns following a quickie with handsome young buck at a village fair. Well, it was the buttoned-up no-thrills Fifties and unmarried mothers were the whores of Babylon. The film co-stars Steve Coogan (who also produced it and co-wrote the screenplay) as the real-like Martin Sixthsmith, former BBC journalist and Blairite spin doctor who wrote the book upon which the film is based. The movie went on general release today so I won’t add a spoiler. Suffice it to say it ain’t The Sound of Music but it isn’t Angela’s Ashes either. The subtle, gentle and often funny script allows the harrowing  story to unfold and take centre stage without the outrage slapping the audience about the face. Dame Judi is, as always, superb and Steve Googan (who is more famous as Norwich’s very own fictitious DJ, Alan Partridge) is surprisingly good.  It’s well worth shelling out a few shillings for.

Imagine the absurdity of two openly gay, married, middle aged, middle class men escaping the liberal sanctuary of anonymous London to relocate to a Muslim country. I chronicled our exploits with the mad, the bad, the sad and the glad in a blog for the whole world to ignore. Then came the book which became a critically acclaimed best seller. Its success opened out a whole new career for me, firstly as an author, and now as an indie publisher. Who'd have thought it? Certainly not me. In June 2012, we ended our Anatolian affair and paddled back to Britain on the evening tide, washing up in Norwich, a surprising city in eastern England, then to the wilds of Norfolk as the only gays in the village. I’m sometimes nostalgic for our encounters with the hopeless, the hapless and, yes, the happy go lucky. They gave me an unexpected tale to tell and for this I thank them.

14 thoughts on “Philomena”

      1. Made up.. it had a limited release in the US and was a perfect girlie night movie … can’t believe that Judi just celebrated her 79th birthday! Thoroughly enjoyed it.

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  3. Thanks for this, Jack … I will be dragging the old man along to see this. I adore Judy Dench … and not just because she is a York girl. (I’m from Yorkshire) She well deserves her Dameship (is that a word?)

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  6. Saw it at the Toronto International Film Festival and loved it. Very sensitive handling of a horrific abuse (yet again!) by the Catholic Church… And Dench is perfect in her role.

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