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Greenfingers

2001, Movie, R, 91 mins

Greenfingers: Review

GREENFINGERS
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Sweet, predictable and thoroughly life-affirming, this fact-based tale of redemption through cultivating flowers is a precious trifle that gets some snap, crackle and pop from Helen Mirren's gleefully imperious turn as gardening expert Georgina Woodhouse. Nearing the end of his sentence, longtime prison inmate Colin Briggs (Clive Owen) is transferred to Edgefield, a minimum-security facility in the Cotswalds whose warden, Hodge (Warren Clarke), believes that a taste of freedom helps prepare inmates for life on the outside. Briggs is assigned to share a room with a chipper old man, Fergus Wilks (David Kelly), whose geriatric charms are lost on the sullen Briggs. Still, the two eventually form a wary friendship, and come Christmas, Wilks give Briggs a small gift: A packet of violet seeds. Briggs plants them under duress — in the end, even he isn't hardhearted enough to deny a doddering old man's holiday fancy — but when they blossom heartily in the spring, he's hooked. And what's more, Briggs clearly has a natural gift for gardening, the "greenfingers" of the title. Wilks helps Briggs persuade the warden to let him start a garden, and with three other prisoners — hulking Raw (Adam Fogerty), laid-back Jimmy (Paterson Joseph) and impetuous Tony (Danny Dyer) — they're off and planting. When Woodhouse comes to town for a book signing, Hodge persuades her to visit the prison garden and she quickly becomes the inmates' biggest supporter, even helping them win a spot in the prestigious Hampton Court Flower Show. Meanwhile, romance is springing up between Briggs and Woodhouse's shy daughter, Primrose (Natasha Little). That it's based on real events doesn't stop this plucky little picture from dredging up every cliché in the book: From the get-go you know who's going to die, who's going to blossom, and who's going to almost (but not quite) mess things up for the others. But it's hard not to be charmed by scenes like the one in which Briggs gives his posies a little pep talk, assuring them that just because they sprouted behind prison walls doesn't mean they can't compete with those hoity-toity flowers at Hampton Court. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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