"Fantastic" is a charming contemporary fable, a showcase for the varied talents of the late Tom Wilkinson in high-curmudgeon mode, leprechaunish Andrew Scott and goddessy Jessica Brown Findlay (fka Lady Sibyl Crawley of "Downton"). The script and the cinematography seem just about perfect if you can stand a bit of whimsey from time to time--e.g. Our heroine, Bella (Findlay), is a foundling who's rescued by a flock of ducks and "one of those elderly lunatics" who go swimming in the lake in London's Hyde Park. Mad props to whoever designed the walled garden that's at the heart of it all, also to whoever styled young Bella's perfectly symmetrical plate of vegetables and all the other OCD signifiers that fill her little cottage.
This film's not recommended for the cynical or the literal-minded; I can't believe some reviewers slagged it because it "glamorizes mental illness" or some such. Apart from her insistence on perfect order and symmetry, lovely Bella's just an extreme introvert, even an agoraphobe, "terrified by the unpredictability of nature," but she gets by with a little (okay, more than a little) help from her friends and realizes her life's ambition, and is there anything so wrong with that?
We saw this one a few years ago and loved it, but couldn't remember the title when we felt like seeing it again. Luckily it turned up eventually on the slideshow of stuff that like-minded customers watched, including "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain," which is also recommended (even though it kind of sentimentalizes mental illness, IMHO). Thanks, Amazon algo!
This film's not recommended for the cynical or the literal-minded; I can't believe some reviewers slagged it because it "glamorizes mental illness" or some such. Apart from her insistence on perfect order and symmetry, lovely Bella's just an extreme introvert, even an agoraphobe, "terrified by the unpredictability of nature," but she gets by with a little (okay, more than a little) help from her friends and realizes her life's ambition, and is there anything so wrong with that?
We saw this one a few years ago and loved it, but couldn't remember the title when we felt like seeing it again. Luckily it turned up eventually on the slideshow of stuff that like-minded customers watched, including "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain," which is also recommended (even though it kind of sentimentalizes mental illness, IMHO). Thanks, Amazon algo!