PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 12/9/05)

Like Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy, Mrs. Henderson Presents is a movie about the theater that approaches its subject in a highly theatrical style. This alone makes the film something of a departure for director Stephen Frears, who rose to prominence directing raw slice-of-life dramas like My Beautiful Laundrette. With Henderson, however, he trades in his usual realism for a heightened artificiality. Even when the film leaves the confines of the Windmill Theatre, the Soho-based revue house owned by the titular Mrs. Henderson (Judi Dench), Frears still appears to be framing the action for a proscenium. It's a risky approach, particularly when your cheeky stage comedy is also, in part, a war movie. Beginning in 1937 and running through the early '40s, Mrs. Henderson Presents depicts World War II-era London with the kind of stiff upper lip whimsy that brings to mind John Boorman's Hope and Glory or Powell and Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. The war itself is largely kept offscreen as are the harsh realities that Londoners confronted on a daily basis during the blitz. Not everyone will buy into the illusion that Frears is trying to create here. After all, in this post-Saving Private Ryan era, moviegoers tend to expect a more "authentic" (i.e. graphic) depiction of war. But it would be a mistake to write Mrs. Henderson Presents off as a frivolous diversion. A pervading sense of loss underlines all of the snappy repartee and double entendres. By the time the credits roll, the film has managed to show the toll of war without a single onscreen death.

Dench has long been the go-to actress for sharp-tongued dowagers, largely because nobody does it better (with the possible exception of her friend and colleague Maggie Smith). And as Laura Henderson, a free-spirited 69-year-old society queen, the actress is at the top of her game. After her husband's death, Mrs. Henderson finds herself at loose ends and decides to put her wealth and status to good use by opening a theater. Since she knows next to nothing about show business, she hires a prickly manager named Vivan Van Damm (Bob Hoskins) to come up with a spectacle that will make the Windmill the toast of London. Van Damm proposes the idea of "Revuedeville"—a vaudeville show that runs all day long. The production is an instant success, so much so that competing theaters immediately borrow the concept for themselves. Undaunted, Mrs. Henderson comes up with a selling point sure to attract customers: add some nude girls to the act.

It's a slight story to be sure, but the pleasures of Mrs. Henderson Presents lie less with the narrative and more with the film's tone and the dynamic duo of Dench and Hoskins. The actors make terrific sparring partners, while also crafting a believable—if entirely platonic—romance. Both Mrs. Henderson and Mr. Van Damm have pain in their respective pasts (she lost her only son during the first World War, his Jewish relatives remained on the Continent even after Hitler rose to power) and the Windmill becomes a way for them to funnel their sadness into creating something positive. Unlike Leigh, Frears is less concerned with detailing the exact workings of an English theater so aside from the show's self-possessed star Maureen (Kelly Reilly), the Revuedeville performers remain largely anonymous as do the backstage crew. When the war finally does strike close to home, the sequence of events leading up to the tragedy feels rushed, but the final scene is lovely, with Dench and Hopkins dancing on the theater roof against a colorful matte painting of the London skyline. For these two, life is and always will be a show.—Ethan Alter