Saving Grace

Ripe with the same neo-Ealing spirit that suffused The Full Monty and Waking Ned Devine, the blithely picaresque Saving Grace considers a sleepy British town teeming with iconic locals, then subverts its twee gentility with Anglican coyness. Brenda Blethyn, she of Secrets & Lies fame and Little Voice shame, stars as the recently widowed Grace Trevethyn, whose late husband has checked his earthly debts at St. Peter's Gate. Stricken with deficit, Grace hits upon a beyond-unlikely scheme: with the assistance of her roguish gardener (co-writer Craig Ferguson), she'll cultivate a plot of hemp within her greenhouse and hock the herbal wares for much-needed quid.

Edgy, yes, but no more so than Monty's randy exhibitionism or the nothing-sacred duplicity perpetrated in Devine-ultimately, the drug theme is as innocuous to the film's winsome cheek as... well, marijuana. And when the good folk of Grace's Cornish village begin to sample her harvest, uproarious hijinks of the nigh-precious English variety ensue: old biddies get baked, Grace fends off curious authorities with matriarchal charm and Ned Devine all but wakes up.

First-time feature director Nigel Cole rotates the plot cylinders with assurance, staging an especially wry encounter between Grace and a dodgy kingpin (Tcheky Karyo). The cast demonstrates the British instinct for seamless ensemble performance-Blethyn, in particular, is precise and blissfully serene as a respectable woman momentarily dabbling in the uncouth. Saving Grace may be slight, and slightly familiar, but it leaves a pleasant buzz.

-By Dan Mallory