Dir.
Julian Jarrold, UK , 2005, 107 mins
Cast:
Joel Edgerton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sarah Jane Potts
If this isn't the great hit it deserves to be, I'll have to do a Charlie Chaplin and eat my boots, kinky or otherwise! This is a terrific movie with the potential to be another Full Monty in terms of success.
Charlie (Joel Edgerton) inherits his father's footwear factory in Northampton and finds it's going broke, as there's now little demand for traditionally crafted men's shoes. In London he meets cross-dressing night club performer Lola (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and together they come up with an idea to save the factory - sexy footwear for transvestites. The film is a fictionalisation of a true life story (see Kinky Boots feature).
The title sequence, showing us the childhoods of the two main characters, sets them up for us perfectly, both their differences and what they have in common. Edgerton is very engaging as the hapless Charlie and well holds his own against Ejiofor's flamboyant and complex Lola, a very butch looking bloke, who just feels happiest wearing a frock. Ejiofor is terrific in the role. It's a funny and touching film about prejudice, preconceptions and the nature of manhood as much as the saving of a boot factory, totally original and very well written by Tim Firth and Geoff Deane. Lola in particular has some gloriously funny lines but all the characters are well drawn and ring true, including the workers in the factory, coping in their different ways with this bizarrely different person in their midst. One of them is Don (Nick Frost), whose face is a picture when, having subjected this big, black lady to a spot of sexual harassment, he finally persuades her to sit on his knee and then realises the awful truth. Conversely there's a lovely little scene to watch out for between Lola and his Northampton landlady, which demonstrates just how pragmatic old ladies can be when it comes to accepting the unusual. Sarah Jane Potts is very likeable as Charlie's feisty assistant Lauren. We've worked out long before Charlie does that these two are made for each other. And the musical numbers in Lola's club in London and in a terrific grand finale at the Milan Shoe Fair are beautifully staged spectaculars. I reckon the stage musical version will be with us in two or three years.
The build up to that Milan grand finale does become a little artificial however, with a "will Lola get to the shoe fair in time or not" type situation being set up, which seems to come from movie land rather than real life. Something similar happened in the final stages of Firth's previous film Calendar Girls, when Julie Walters and Helen Mirren fell out, just in order to make a good reunion at the end.. But I do but quibble. I was won over by the sheer joyful exuberance of the ending and the fact that by now I was totally in love with all the characters.
Carol Allen
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