I am not sure if the word serendipity is the right word to use here, but I’ll use it anyway. So let me tell you how I found the “The Girl in the Cafe” (hereafter “The Girl”). In 2006 I was surfing IMDB, as I often do, looking for strange little movies. Scrolling through the award lists I fell over this little gem. It kind of fetched my eye because of Kelly MacDonald and Bill Nighy, actors I knew by name but had not seen much of. I had seen Kelly MacDonald in Robert Altmans “Gosford Park” and fell in love and I had seen Bill Nighy in both “Love Actually” (in which he is brilliant) and as Victor in “Underworld” (which is a brilliant movie, but in which my feelings for Bills acting are more ambivalent). So I gave “The Girl” a try and I never went back.
The word serendipity is probably not right to describe my experience finding this film, since it was an active act of searching, even if I did not know what exactly I was looking for. But if not for The Girl, I would never have found Damien Rice, and that is an act of serendipity, I believe.
The Girl is a love story, an unusual love story, with kind of a serendipity beginnning. It is a quiet lovestory, and I also found it beautiful. The two main characters, Lawrence and Gina, meet at a cafe while Lawrence has a coffebreak from work. Lawrence, a civil servant, and Gina, a young unemployd student of life, fall for each other. They decide to meet again for lunch, and then dinner, until Lawrence finally decides to ask Gina to go to the G8-summit in Reykjavik with him.
I really love Bills acting, as the quiet and almost invisible civil servant, who has been living alone for too long. One can almost see it in his walk, how he evades people while reading something work related. At times it really hurt watching Lawrence and I really felt sorry for him. For me Bills acting and Damien Rice’s beautiful music are the essence of this move.
Now go out and watch it for yourself.
