A Village Affair

I’ve noticed that British movies are particularly good at two things: dramatic love confessions and passive aggression. A Village Affair is a standard British TV movie that wisely features both of these things.

A Village Affair is yet another movie about a woman stuck in a boring, heterosexual marriage . That is, until she meets and falls for an interesting lesbian. Specifically, the heterosexual couple are Alice and Martin. They’ve just moved to a small town with their young children. Alice and Martin meet the friendly Sir Ralph and Lady Unwin who welcome them to the village. They also meet the Unwin’s daughter Clodagh, a rebellious spirit and subject of much village gossip. Clodagh befriends Alice and Martin. While Martin initially thinks that she is hanging around out of a despite to engage in an affair with him, it is of course Alice with whom Clodagh’s interest lies.

A Village Affair is not the most exciting movie. In fact, sometimes it’s downright boring. But I think that’s intentional. At least part of it is pretty factual to what living in a small town is like. But at the end of the day, intentionally or not, it’s still boring. There is little here I haven’t seen before in other WLW movies or in other British movies or really, just in any work of fiction. However, I can see this level of familiarity being comforting and appealing to some viewers especially over a certain age. This is, perhaps, a rare WLW movie that’s made for straight women in their 40’s rather than hip, queer 20-somethings.

Despite being largely dull, A Village Affair also features odd moments of out of place melodrama. Especially when it comes to the lesbian content. When Alice and Clodagh kiss or share a romantic moment, dramatic music like the kind you’d hear in a thriller plays. It’s completely at odds to the fairly innocuous depiction of two ladies in love. The music is trying to add drama but it’s done for the wrong scenes. A Village Affair was released in 1995. There’s no need for dramatic stinger music every time two women kiss. Calm down.

The movie is largely at its best during the third act. The drama after the discovery of Alice and Clodagh’s affair is the best part. The acting is enough to make the dramatic scenes have weight. Also wonderful (if a bit unlikely) is the support Alice gets from members of her small community. Various townspeople offer their support and assurance to Alice that they support her or don’t care about her same-sex affair. It’s nice to see.

The biggest downside of the conclusion of Alice and Clodagh’s relationship. They don’t up together. Instead, Alice breaks up with Clodagh. This is not in and of itself bad, there are valid reasons for her to do this. Clodagh is rather spoiled and doesn’t understand that Alice will always put her children first. Going further back, she initially comes on to Alice so strong as to be borderline predatory. But none of these valid reasons are why Alice ends things. Alice ends it because, “everyone has lost something so it’s only fair that she loses something too.” That’s some bullshit. Either let your lesbians be happy or at least split them up for a more valid reason than a misplaced sense of fairness. I guess two women engaging in a same-sex affair and getting a happy ending would be too edgy for viewers in 1995.

A Village Affair is a shade better than fine but not quite good enough to be called good. It’s a TV movie and it does fall into the TV movie trap of just not being the most creative or surprising. There’s little uniqueness to the story. Though to be fair, I have also seen this story done a lot worse. The acting is good and Alice and Clodagh have good chemistry. Still, the ending is deeply frustrating and the movie up until that point is far from the most gripping WLW movie out there.

Overall rating: 5.2/10

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