The Queen of Sheba's Pearls

The Queen of Sheba's Pearls was one of three films we saw on Sunday July 31st.I was a bit worried about seeing three films in a row but found it very easy, despite the fact that we had to slum it in row S for all three. Row S has traditional tip-up cinema seats and isn't at all what we've become used to but never mind.

TQOSP is set in England in 1952 and centres around a boy whose mother was killed in 1944 on his eighth birthday. He lives in a huge country vicarage with the vicar (apparently no relation), his great uncle (a funeral director), his maternal grandmother, his father (works in the funeral business), a swedish chap (also works in the funeral business), and his two maiden maternal aunts who appear to be unemployed but who are bonking the vicar and the swedish chap respectively. Anyhow, into this unlikely household arrives a swedish woman who looks exactly like Jack's dead mother. This causes great consternation and rattles a skeleton or two out of some closets but gradually everyone sorts themselves out and lives happily ever after.

It was a moderately absorbing film but I'm not sure what the maker was trying to say or why it took 132 minutes to try and say it. Perhaps he was just trying to capture English people being terribly English and thought this sufficient entertainment in its own right.

Anne's rating 3/5: Ians rating 2.5/5