Jessica Kiang It’s 1975 and Alice Lamb, played by Penelope Wilton, is cussing at her typewriter and telling cute children to “bugger off.” When we cut back to the same typewriter some 30 years earlier, Alice, now played by Gemma Arterton, is again shouting at local kids and pointedly buying for herself the rationed chocolate bar another saucer-eyed moppet so desires. “Summerland,” the amiable debut feature from UK theater director and playwright Jessica Swale, works hard in its opening 10 minutes to convey the irascible Alice’s unlikability, and then even harder over the following 89 to unpick that impression.
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