Publisher: CinemaSerf July 24, 2024
"Helen" (Louise Brealy) wakes up in the morning in what looks like a bedsit, with a suitcase of her meagre possessions tucked under the mattress. A chubby chav walks in on her and we discover that this is, in fact, her husband "Gary" (Celyn Jones) who has banished her to the spare room so he can live with his teeny-pop girlfriend "Amy" (Emily Fairn) and their brand new baby. Needless to say, she's not an happy woman but she puts up with all of this so she can stay close to his ailing mother "Gwen" (Sorcha Cusack) who's bedridden and clearly not too long for this world. Her only real moments of joy come from her work. She works with a tightly knit group of women packing chickens. The routine mundanity of that job leads the four of them to play daft games and try to chivvy each other along to alleviate the boredom - especially on a nightshift! Then a bit of a bombshell arrives in the form of "Joanne" (Annabel Scholey). Despite a rather frosty reunion, it's obvious that there is some baggage between these two women and the rest of the film infills some of the backstory of both women augmented by some frequently laugh out loud comedy. The principal culprit of the humour is "Paula" (Beverly Rudd) - rough around the edges but with an heart of gold and some of the best lines from an entertainingly written script. The plot is fairly predictable, though auteur Janis Pugh does throw a few spanners in the works to keep it interesting, and there are some semi-musical theatre style numbers as the story occasionally uses it's decent soundtrack to advance the story - usually to epitomise the unhappiness of "Helen". It's well cast with a solid supporting effort, a tiny bit of social commentary and a rather queazy rapport between the girls and one of those plastic heads kids used to used to practice their make-up skills on. It could also serve as a pretty good advert for never eating chickens - the things these women get up to plucking these birds could put you off for ever!