This Beautiful Fantastic is a 2016 British romantic drama film directed and written by Simon Aboud and starring Jessica Brown Findlay, Tom Wilkinson, Andrew Scott, Jeremy Irvine, Anna Chancellor, Eileen Davies.
This Beautiful Fantastic | |
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Directed by | Simon Aboud |
Written by | Simon Aboud |
Produced by | Andrea Iervolino Monika Bacardi Christine Alderson Kami Naghdi Matt Treadwell Iliane Ogilvie Thompson Jennifer Levine Norman Merry Phil Hunt Compton Ross |
Starring | Jessica Brown Findlay Tom Wilkinson Andrew Scott Jeremy Irvine Anna Chancellor Eileen Davies |
Cinematography | Mike Eley |
Edited by | David Charap |
Music by | Anne Nikitin |
Production companies | Ipso Facto Productions Smudge Films |
Release date |
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Running time | 92 minutes[1] |
Country | United Kingdom |
Languages | English Irish |
Bella Brown is a young woman with obsessive–compulsive disorder.[2] She works in a public library and is trying to write a children’s book. Bella's fear of plants causes her to neglect the garden of her rented house. Her landlord gives her one month in which to improve the garden, or face eviction. She develops relationships with her curmudgeonly next-door-neighbour, his doctor, her cook and housekeeper, and a male inventor who frequents the library.
Principal photography on the film began in London in July 2015.[3][4]
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 61% based on 23 reviews, and an average rating of 6.08/10.[5] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 51 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[6]
Middling reviews from critics used the term “twee”[7][8][9] with comparisons to Amélie.[7][8] Negative reviews focused on having too many distracting questions, such as why Bella doesn’t just hire a gardener for a few days[7] and the film’s depiction of troubled mental health as a charming eccentricity.[7][8] Some reviews focused on taste, with Dennis Harvey calling the film a "formulaic crowd-pleaser", that audiences will either find the film sweet or too sweet.[8][9] Sheri Linden calls the film "sweet but not saccharine" and Neil Genzlinger writes "enjoyable performances keep the tale from becoming too heavy-handed".[10][11]