Albatross

Albatross is a lovely coming of age drama, focussing on Emelia, an aspiring writer, who is trying to follow in the footsteps of her great grandfather Arthur Conan Doyle. When the film opens she has just started working as a cleaner in a B&B on the south coast of England. While there she becomes very involved with the family who run it, Joa, the frustrated mother, Jonathan the husband who sits in the attic trying to recreate the magic of his first novel, which was a bestseller 20 or so years ago, and Beth, the shy and studious daughter who is hoping to get to Oxford University.

Emelia is opionated and rebellious and becomes friends with Beth, helping her to learn to let her hair down. Meanwhile Jonathan has recognised Emelia's writing talents and starts to tutor her (and yes you can see where that one's going, with Jonathan's marriage being so unhappy and Emelia being so attractive and such a vibrant personality).

There's a lot of humour in the story and a lot of inspiration for writers too! It's wonderful to see Emelia starting to believe in her talents and the viewer can imagine her later becoming a significant writer.

The one thing that didn't quite work was the location. The story is set on the south coast of England. but was filmed on the Isle of Man. This gives us gorgeous scenery, but doesn't quite ring true with where its supposed to be set. (Isle of Man is now definitely on my list of places to go on holiday, what with this film and the segments of the recent series of Springwatch that were filmed on the island.).

I saw a press showing of this film. The remaining public screening is in George Square Theatre about half an hour from now, as I type, so hurry, hurry, there may be tickets left! It should get general release in British cinemas pretty soon.

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