The Bookshop

(Isabel Coixet, Spain - UK - Germany 2017)

The Bookshop is a sumptuous cinematic adaptation which celebrates Bibliophilia itself. Based on Penelope Fitzgerald's celebrated novel of 1978, and set in a sleepy 1950's English town, The Bookshop tells the story of Florence Green's ultimately doomed attempt to re-energise an out of touch, morally somnambulant rural townsfolk through the dissemination of some of the most stirring literature of the day. Leaving grief and a dead husband in the past, Florence takes life into her own hands by opening a bookshop in Hardborough, a quiet Anglian town, and one sheltered from the social and sexual revolutions taking place in the far away urban centres. Through the dissemination of classic contemporary works of fiction such as Nabokov's Lolita and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, she stirs long buried feelings in the townsfolk and in particular in the reclusive Mr Brundish with whom she subsequently strikes up a deep bond. But her actions bring the wrath of the controlling, vengeful Violet Gamart, a local social doyenne who is jealously affronted by the changes our heroine has affected.