Keeping Mum

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details about Keeping Mum's classification and consumer advice lines
• a review of Keeping Mum completed by Young Media Australia (YMA) on 16 January 2006.

Overall comments and recommendations

Keeping Mum is a highly entertaining, black comedy, brilliantly acted by Maggie Smith and Rowan Atkinson, which will appeal to many adults and older adolescents.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) and the associated consumer advice lines.

YMA review

This review of the movie Keeping Mum contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• use of violence
• material that may scare children
• product placement
• sexual references
• nudity and sexual activity
• use of substances
• coarse language
• the movie's message

A synopsis of the story

Forty-three years ago, the young, attractive and pregnant Rosemary Jones (Emilia Fox) is travelling by rail through the peaceful English countryside when a guard notices blood seeping from a large trunk with her name on it. She is arrested at the next train stop by police who find two dismembered bodies in her trunk. She innocently explains that her husband was going to run off with his mistress, which she couldn’t just let happen. She is consequently sent to a prison for the criminally insane.

We then, in the present time, meet the dysfunctional Goodfellow family. Walter Goodfellow (Rowan Atkinson) is the vicar of Little Wallop, a pretty, English village. Walter is a very amiable but dull man who has little idea of the problems his family is having. Preoccupied with his vicarage, Walter doesn’t realise that his wife Gloria (Kristen Scott Thomas) is lonely, bored, frustrated and consequently having an affair with her golf instructor Lance, (Patrick Swayze) an egotistical sleaze with very little self-restraint. Walter’s beautiful, 17 year old daughter Holly (Tamsin Egerton) is highly promiscuous and attracted to punk boys, while his son Petey (Toby Parkes) is being bullied at school.

Into the fray comes a new housekeeper, Grace Hawkins (Maggie Smith) who brings with her a very large trunk, which, she says, contains a lifetime of memories. Grace has a unique and very effective way of dispensing justice and dealing with the problems that confront the Goodfellow family. She also helps Walter see things in their right perspective. With a bit of a twist to the tale, Grace helps the Goodfellows get their lives back on track.

Use of violence

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

There is some violence in this movie, including:

• Schoolboys bully Petey, shoving, kicking and pushing him over a wall.
  
• The schoolboys all crash their bikes, which have been tampered with. They fall heavily to the ground, one of them goes over a wall and one actually dies.
  
• Grace hits Lance over the head with an iron, killing him.

Material that may scare children

Under eight

Children under eight are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations, the death of a parent or child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

In addition to the above mentioned violent scenes, there are some scary scenes in this movie including:

• talk of dismembered bodies in the trunk.
  
• the Goodfellows’ neighbour finds his dog dead
  
• the neighbour is also killed
  
• Mrs Parker, another neighbour, dies of a heart attack.
  
• Grace holds a large knife in her hand menacingly.
  
• dead bodies are shown floating at the bottom of a pond.

Aged eight to thirteen

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

Children in this age group could be scared by the above mentioned scenes and the realistic dangers portrayed in the movie.

Over the age of thirteen

Children over the age of thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic physical harm or threats, molestation or sexual assault and / or threats from aliens or the occult.

Some children over the age of thirteen could be disturbed by the murders shown in this movie.

Sexual references

The film contains several sexual references and sexual innuendo including:

• Gloria says that although sex is legal at 17, that doesn’t make it decent
  
• Lance rubs himself against Gloria in a sexual manner
  
• Gloria talks about Lillie McBride who made love in every room in her house.
  
• Lance watches Holly undressing at her window
  
• Lance returns with a video camera to film Holly undressing.

Nudity and sexual activity

There is some nudity and sexual activity, much of which is portrayed in a disrespectful manner, including:

• Holly and her boyfriend are obviously having sex in a Kombi van outside the front of the house, as the Kombi is rocking heavily.
  
• Holly emerges from the van with her breasts exposed
  
• Lance and Gloria kiss passionately in a car but she refuses to have sex there
  
• Lance and Gloria meet in a beach shack and they start to strip off. When he gets down to his ‘g-string’ Gloria changes her mind.
  
• Holly is shown at the window naked from the waist up.
  
• Walter and Gloria are shown making love, although nothing too explicit is shown.

Use of substances

There is some drinking of alcohol with a meal.

Coarse language

The film contains quite a bit of coarse language, including several uses of:

• bitch
  
• fuck
  
• Jesus Christ
  
• Oh my God.

The movie's message

The take home message from this movie is that it is important to get one’s priorities in life right and to have a balance between work and play, and that relationships need working at or they will fall apart. Conversely the film might also relay the impression that it’s okay to take the law into your own hands.

This movie could give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children attitudes and behaviours, and their consequences, such as bullying, sexual promiscuity, sexual perversion and taking revenge.