The Girl in the Café

TV Movie
20052005
TV-14TV-14
1h 34m

IMDb RATING

7.4/10

8.5K

YOUR RATING

Kelly Macdonald and Bill Nighy in The Girl in the Café (2005)

Drama Romance

Lawrence, an aging, lonely civil servant falls for Gina, an enigmatic young woman. When he takes her to the G8 Summit in Reykjavik, however, their bond is tested by Lawrence's professional o... Read allLawrence, an aging, lonely civil servant falls for Gina, an enigmatic young woman. When he takes her to the G8 Summit in Reykjavik, however, their bond is tested by Lawrence's professional obligations.Lawrence, an aging, lonely civil servant falls for Gina, an enigmatic young woman. When he takes her to the G8 Summit in Reykjavik, however, their bond is tested by Lawrence's professional obligations.

IMDb RATING

7.4/10

8.5K

YOUR RATING

See production, box office & company info

See more at IMDbPro

Won 3 Primetime Emmys
- 6 wins & 19 nominations total

Trivia
Bill Nighy based his performance on Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love (2002). He wanted to give a comic performance without ever trying to be funny in-character.

Goofs
G8 Summits are only held in the G8 nations - Canada, the US, Japan, Russia, Germany, Italy, France and Britain. A summit would not be meeting in Iceland.

Quotes
Lawrence: Tell me... why were you in prison?
Gina: I hurt a man.
Lawrence: Why?
Gina: Because he hurt a child, killed a child.
Lawrence: Your child?
Gina: Does it matter whose child?

Crazy credits
During the credits, the sound of a finger snapping every 3 seconds is heard. Each snap represents a death in the world due to extreme poverty.

Connections
Featured in The 63rd Annual Golden Globe Awards 2006 (2006)

Soundtracks
Cold Water
(uncredited)
Written and Performed by Damien Rice
[heard at beginning and over end credits]

User reviews118

Review

Featured review

10/10

Realistic. Touching. Unmissable.

Written to coincide with the Africa Lives series on the BBC and also the current Make Poverty History campaign, 'The Girl in the Cafe' is a superlative TV drama that makes its political points without resorting to grandstanding or heavy-handedness.

Played to absolute perfection by Bill Nighy and especially Kelly MacDonald, and written by Richard Curtis with his usual wry wit, this drama places a socially aware Everywoman in the same room as the world's most powerful politicians at a fictional G8 Summit in Reykjavik.

The blossoming romance of the two leads and the politics of the summit develop in perfect tandem, neither allowed to undermine the other. It is to Curtis's credit that he does not seek to provide an easy way out for any of the characters, nor does he wrap everything up in a neat bow at the climax.

This is one of the most accomplished TV dramas I have ever seen, and I can only hope that it achieves the profile elsewhere that its creative team and, more importantly, its message deserves.

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