Intermission: 'Calendar Girls' proves risque can be OK

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Jim Wunderle owns Wunderle Sound Services and is a Springfield free-lance writer and musician.|ret||ret||tab|

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How many times has a bad sofa spurred you into action? There's nothing worse than sitting hours at a time, day after day, on an uncomfortable couch. It can drive one to madness; or sometimes, greatness. The latter is the case in the "based on a true story" film "Calendar Girls."|ret||ret||tab|

English director Nigel Cole proved he had a deft and quirky hand with British comedy when he gave us Brenda Blethyn as the prim, proper lady who had to grow pot to make a living in "Saving Grace." |ret||ret||tab|

This time around he has a group of seemingly prim and proper older women who decide to do a "naughty" calendar for their local chapter of the prim and proper British organization The Women's Institute. It's for a good cause, though, and they succeed beyond their wildest dreams. The movie succeeds as well and, while every discussion of "Calendar Girls" will make references to "The Full Monty," there are deeper underlying themes here and it equals (and in my opinion, surpasses) "Monty." |ret||ret||tab|

"The Full Monty" was a surprise hit with a cast of mostly unknowns. "Calendar Girls" features an ensemble cast of fairly established actresses led by one of the classiest, strongest, most viable women onscreen today, Helen Mirren.|ret||ret||tab|

Dame Mirren (she became a Dame of the British Empire last year) projects a strength and determination that flows out of every scene she's ever done. Starting out as a stage actress with Britain's National Youth Theatre and later the Royal Shakespeare Company, Mirren began her film career in 1968 as Hermia in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." |ret||ret||tab|

In "Calendar Girls," Mirren plays Chris Harper, a free-spirited, feisty member of The Women's Institute in Knapely, a village in Yorkshire, England. She only joined to please her mother, and she and most of the other members are bored to tears by the weekly speakers engaged to address the group. |ret||ret||tab|

Chris' home life is fine. She and her husband run a flower business, and when she finds a magazine called "Bazooka City" (it concerns breasts, not firearms) under her son's bed she doesn't get the least upset. She realizes as a young teen he's just discovering his sexuality. Her attitude does little to cheer the kid, however.|ret||ret||tab|

Trouble begins when Annie, Chris' best friend, loses her husband to leukemia. While the ladies spend long hours at the hospital, they become painfully aware of just how uncomfortable the couch in the relatives' waiting area is. They vow to do something about it.|ret||ret||tab|

Annie's husband John was to have spoken to the Women's Institute and Annie finds the speech he'd prepared. While mostly about the local flora, he gives compliment to the ladies of the area saying that the flowers of Yorkshire were like the women, they grow more beautiful with age and the latter stages are the most glorious. |ret||ret||tab|

When the time comes to decide on a theme for this year's calendar The Women's Institute issues a pictorial calendar every year to raise money firebrand Chris has an idea. She and 11 other of the ladies will pose tastefully "nude, not naked" doing things like baking, arranging flowers and other everyday activities that befit the ladies of The Women's Institute. She figures they can raise the 999 pounds that a new sofa costs and donate it in John's name to the hospital.|ret||ret||tab|

After much cajoling she and Annie persuade some other ladies to join the crusade, much to the horror of the leaders of the local The Women's Institute, not to mention the ladies' husbands and children. Chris' breast-obsessed son is among them.|ret||ret||tab|

A somewhat shy photographer is chosen and a plan for the photo shoot is forged. |ret||ret||tab|

The national council of The Women's Institute reluctantly agrees to the calendar, so long as the ladies keep it low key and local. Which they do ... at first. The national press picks up on it and soon it's all over England. The ladies eventually fly to Hollywood to do "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." |ret||ret||tab|

Going far beyond the sofa, the calendar eventually raises enough money to outfit a new leukemia unit at the hospital.|ret||ret||tab|

"Calendar Girls" as is evident by its PG-13 rating never gets raunchy. It's fun while making some serious points. Cole keeps the pace snappy, and the glue that bonds the piece together is Mirren. She's as classy and, at 58, as attractive as ever.|ret||ret||tab|

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