Tropic Sprockets  / This Beautiful Fantastic

By Ian Brockway

Simon Aboud (Comes a Bright Day) directs a mild and sweet fairy tale entitled “This Beautiful Fantastic” about a young woman with OCD and her experiences with a garden. The film is light, colorful and amusing. Although the story doesn’t add anything to the romantic genre, it is bolstered by a fine performance from Jessica Brown Findlay and has some tones that are very reminiscent of Roald Dahl.

Bella (Findley) was left by the pond as an infant and minded by ducks. She grows afraid of nature and disorder for an unknown reason. She goes to Catholic school. Bella starts to create arresting graphic designs wherever she finds herself and secures a small cottage next to Alfie, an old grouch (Tom Wilkinson).

Scrooge-like Alfie resents Bella’s disregard of her garden which is more like a forest of green and thorny weeds. The miserable man is invariably sour and very demeaning to his aide Vernon (Andrew Scott). Alfie is clearly negative about most everything, except florals and a gourmet meal.

Vernon is fed up and decides to work for Bella instead of Alfie, but when Bella’s landlord appears, he gives Bella an ultimatum: either make the garden presentable or you are homeless. Alfie consents to help Bella in exchange for Vernon’s cuisine. What follows is an unlikely portrait of a friendship with Alfie giving the quizzical Bella horticulture advice which borders on Zen.

Bella works at a library where she confronts quirky characters, including the grim head librarian Millie (Eileen Davies), and Billy (Jeremy Irvine) an eccentric inventor who wears ophthalmology gear and safety pins.

The events are mildly madcap and not quite zany or pointedly outrageous as Bella and Billy begin a romance. As the narrative goes on, the interesting tension between Alfie and Bella dilute into sugar and sweetness. This is okay mostly because of Findlay’s strong acting, but the sense of surprise is lessened with the entrance of Billy,  a carbon copy of a Johnny Depp role with no real dimension. Billy goes around with a robotic bird and Bella creates a tale, but things feel lukewarm and tepid.

The real star of the show is the beautiful cinematography by Mike Eley, showcasing a garden as an eye-popping alien landscape that would have given Monet shivers of mania and prostrations of ecstasy.

Suffice to say, “This Beautiful Fantastic” is already well tended ground where every one learns from others. Replace the garden for something Gothic and one gets a sugary Tim Burton film or a story in the mode of “Benny & Joon” where dysfunction reveals hidden talents. For those that want a Spring idyll, you will be well served, but this all too gentle outing could have shot up in a more exotic direction, given the spirit of its initial and once promising roots.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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