Co-scripted by and starring Michael Palin, of Monty Python fame, AMERICAN FRIENDS is his re-telling of the mid-19th century love affair between his great-grandfather, an Oxford don, and a young Irish-American woman he met in Switzerland. Palin's script is also a gentle satire of the
insular, male, hidebound life at Victorian Oxford University. One of the film's ironic sub-plots is that the university fellow who argues tactfully for change, Oliver Syme (Alfred Molina), is a cad, while the awkward and shy stick-in-the-mud Francis Ashby (Michael Palin), is the more honorable and
likeable chap.
In 1860 Oxford, not only were women excluded, but so was anybody who ...
Released:
1993
Rated:
NR
Length:
95 mins