Keeping Mum (Cert 15, 103 mins) Stars: Rowan Atkinson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith, Patrick Swayze, Emilia Fox Directed by Niall Johnson
BLACK comedies have been popular British cinema fare, ever since Ealing comedies like Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Ladykillers. Keeping Mum is in the same tradition.
Set in the rural English countryside with set rural characters, writer/director Niall Johnson's comedy is a little deceptive at first.
It looks like a jolly little tale of an eternal triangle involving a vicar, his unhappy wife and the good-looking local golf pro.
Played respectively by Rowan Atkinson, Kristin Scott Thomas and Patrick Swayze, the comedy is gentle and amusing.
The vicar is worried about his speech for a forthcoming convention - a sermon entitled God's Mysterious Ways - unaware that his son is being bullied, his daughter sleeping around and his wife being seduced by the golf pro.
Then enter new housekeeper Grace, a sweet old lady played by an on-form Maggie Smith, right, who seems to have an answer to all the problems including that of next door's barking dog.
But, charming as she may seem, her solution to the problems is that beloved by all black comedies - murder.
Comedy and the blackness do not always fit easily in Johnson's script, co-written with Richard Russo, but the classy performances from a strong cast paper over most of the cracks.
And there are some genuinely comic moments amid the bleakness.
