This sunlit rom-com is notable mainly - well, exclusively - for being crowd-funded by the residents of the Oxfordshire village where it is set.
Such arrangements are not unique: the 450,000 ($900,000) budget for the 2006 eco-movie The Age of Stupid was raised by shares as small as 500, and the multi-source financing of much European arthouse product is almost as thinly spread these days. But this was a community undertaking for Kingston Bagpuize: the villagers, who have shares in the finished product, provided everything from the hairdressing to the accommodation and took many of the minor roles. The result is a paean to English village life, hampered by a script as plodding as a geriatric draught-horse and some truly dire acting.
Big-city microbiologist Tom (Mitchelson, a dead ringer for Hugh Grant, only wetter) takes a job as the gardener at the local manor where he falls for Polish au pair Anya (Zawadzki). His lovestruck daze is obvious to her and everyone else but he can't bring himself to make a move (hence the title).
Tom looks to the villagers for advice (you feel like weeping with longing for Florian Habicht's Love Story) and the film concerns itself with their concerted efforts to get him to first base.
The online trailer includes none of the four hilarious moments but gives you a pretty good sense of the rest of the film. Suffice it to say that to compare it, as its makers do, to The Full Monty and Calendar Girls rather overstates its virtues.
Peter Calder
