Wodetow I love this film. It's a powerful story about war. But not from the usual point of view. But rather from a woman's point of view. Far from the war zone. Anna Friel, Brenda Fricker and Molly Parker combine to form a trio of women struglling,each in their own way, to come to terms with the war. They are great in this film. Both induvidualy and as a greater trio. They have to fight for their own place in a world out of their control. Struggling, bonding and clawing for every inch they can, It's inspiring to see how they build a new life. A good life constructed out of desperation . I first saw this film when in won the HeartLand film festival. I saw it again on DVD and feel in love all over again.

max von meyerling How really terrible can a film be, how perfunctory can a period picture be when made by and for people without the slightest idea or even interest in the era beyond some superficial idea of the retro fashion value of certain cultural artifacts. THE WAR BRIDE plays like a Junior High School play. It stands in relation to a real film like the boy's band in THE MUSIC MAN does to a symphony orchestra. It is like a movie about a movie about the war but not a movie about the war. The film is not populated by people but stock notions of stock characters. Let me put it this way: The main character gets pregnant in nine days just to set up a tearful farewell scene. If it's a war film, so goes the logic, we have to have certain scenes and everything is manipulated, even at the peril of logic and history, to get us to some expected cliché scene like finding the toilet with a band on it in the Holiday Inn.Two working girls in the London Blitz of 1940, living and dressing far beyond the means of people at the time, go to a little neighborhood dance which apparently contains a 38 piece dance band very like Glenn Miller which is heard but never seen and which only plays the most acceptable (to today's youth that is) jump tunes, where they meet a couple of Canadian soldiers. The quick gloss, the clothes and the music, are, like the hairstyles, retro cool but really don't reflect the reality of the period. The plot is just twisted in order to present these cool artifacts. There is a farewell scene, the de rigour scene in every war movie since BIRTH OF A NATION and most famously done in THE BIG PARADE (King Vidor). After nine days the soldiers take leave of the girls to go off to the front. What front would that be is the question. After Dunkirk there wasn't much of a front to go off to. Certainly not by truck. They weren't going to drive across the English Channel were they. Forget that the truck they drive off is in US Army markings years before the US entered the war. And we have to have a pregnancy scene, despite everything we know about human biology, the girl announces she's pregnant. As usual everything is manipulated to have these predetermined scenes taken from other war movies. The girls, now married are evacuated, as wives of Canadian soldiers, to Canada. I doubt very much that they would have taken a heavy cruiser across the Atlantic in as much as they might have been better used protecting convoys and sinking the Bismarck etc. I think that the idea was to build a spectacular set of one slight angle of the deck of a ship with a huge gun turret in the background as a suitably dramatic setting. The train journey across Canada is one bad trip. The one room station located in the middle of the forest stands in for both Montreal, Canada's largest city, as well as rural Alberta. All right, it was a low budget picture but a little of what was wasted on the gun turret scene could have at least paid for a glass shot or still insert showing Montreal. When the war bride arrives she is met by her comically dour mother-in law and her crippled daughter. Life will be hard on the farm. I've seen that picture too so if you're still on board at this point please be my guest as you have another hour and a half compilation of stock scenes and stilted reactions. Unbelievable, but even stranger is the reaction of young people who believe this phoney stuff to somehow be authentic.

dakard1050 The film makers have orchestrated a profound and moving journey, a film in which ideas and themes emerge from the interaction of human beings, and not in competition with them. Anna Friel, Brenda Fricker and Molly Parker form as potent a feminine triumvirate as the movies have seen in a very long time, powerful actresses who bring as much richness to the film's silences as to its words.Superficially, the film could be seen as yet another variation on the "liberating outsider" scenario (a popular feminist theme exploited most recently in "Chocolat"), although in "The War Bride" there is considerably more going on than Lily simply teaching her in-laws how to cut loose and live a little. The weightier theme, which develops steadily throughout the film, deals with the inescapable effects of a global war and the extent to which a conflict can still wreak emotional havoc on those furthest removed from actual combat.

Tom Murray The War Bride is a beautiful and inspiring drama, beautifully photographed, with superb acting and full of personal growth. Lily, an English girl, marries Charlie, a Canadian WWII soldier from northern Alberta, who lives on a "big ranch on the prairies". That sounds good to Lily but when she is sent to Canada for the duration of the war, the reality is very different. She is stuck with a grieving mother-in-law and a crippled sister-in-law, who feed off each others' bitterness and depression. The ranch is an unproductive farm with run-down buildings. Lily is horrified but decides to make the best of it and does very well indeed. If you like this film, then see Cold Comfort Farm (1995), a similar story and an intelligent comedy.