The Film Experience is thrilled to welcome back Anne-Marie of "A Year with Kate" and "Judy by the Numbers" fame!
by Anne-Marie
For those actressexuals who feel caught in the doldrums of a late March movie lull, I am pleased to report that Hulu has a brief cure for what ails you. Tea with the Dames (aka There Is Nothing Like A Dame), a delightful bit of fluff that got lost in the midst of last year’s awards season kerfuffle, is a short documentary uniting four of Britain’s living legends--Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Judi Dench, Dame Eileen Atkins, and Dame Joan Plowright--to do what they do best, and apparently do fairly frequently anyway: sit around Dame Plowright’s table, reminisce about their careers and trade bon mots over tea spiked with champagne.
The documentary plays out like a Hollywood Reporter roundtable for octogenarian OBE’s...
After starting with the usual perfunctory “how did you start acting” questions, the dames begin to loosen up, discussing everything from naturalism in acting, to stage fright, to roles they passed over, and even who scared Sir Laurence Olivier the most (it was Maggie Smith).
Augmented by archival footage (including some that the dames are allowed to see and react to themselves), the movie flits from one subject to another, with occasional pauses so one of the dames can reprimand the director for interfering.
The light, conversational nature of the documentary is also its major drawback: with such a short run time and such long careers, the film has very little time to delve into unique choices and challenges of each actress’s career. For those viewers not as familiar with Joan Plowright or Eileen Atkins, this could lead towards confusion, as their unique achievements--Plowright’s long theatrical legacy before and after the National Theatre, and Eileen Atkins’s work in the New Wave--are never discussed. The exception is an early scene during which all four discuss the role of Cleopatra in Shakespeare's tragedy. Only two played Cleopatra, though all four were offered it, and their discussion of their motivations to accept or reject, as well as their dissection of Cleopatra’s role in the theatrical canon, tease at the deep emotion and intelligence all four women bring to their craft.
More typical of the film are several scenes about Sir Laurence Olivier. By virtue of every actress having worked with him (and Plowright having married him), a good half hour of the film focuses on Olivier: how he influenced their careers, what he said about or to them, and anecdotes about his children with Plowright. Dame Plowright, who is now blind, gets the opportunity for some thoughtful comments on career and marriage, but overall the film spends too much time on one incredible man when it could be looking more closely at four legendary women.
Quibbles aside, Tea with the Dames is a delightful way for anglophiles and actressexuals to spend an hour and a half. Even if the film never gets deeper than surface level, it provides just enough to stimulate some curiosity or at least a good rewatch. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to find my DVD of Tea with Mussolini.
Dame Rating: There truly is nothing like 'em
Movie Rating: B