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 enlarge | Director: Charles Dance
Actors: Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Natascha Mcelhone, Daniel Bruehl, Miriam Margolyes
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.94
Buy Used: $3.89
You Save: $11.05 (74%)
New (51) Used (35) from $3.89
Rating:  96 reviews
Sales Rank: 5552
Format: Ac-3, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), German (Original Language), Polish (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Region: 99
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 104 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: COLD13106D
ISBN: 1404914331
UPC: 043396131064
EAN: 9781404914339
ASIN: B000BITVAG
Theatrical Release Date: 2005
Release Date: December 6, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 31-35 of 96
 Grande Damage April 15, 2007
El Lagarto (Ambler, PA)
22 out of 26 found this review helpful
Imagine you are walking through a great art museum, overwhelmed by one massive canvas after another. In your rapture you almost walk right past a tiny painting in the corner, an unassuming, faultless Vermeer. That is this movie. Watch it on its own terms, in its own time, and you will certainly love it.
Ladies In Lavender is a star vehicle for two British Grande Dames, Judi Dench and Maggie Smith - that's hard to beat for star power. (Indeed, the only thing missing in this movie is Helen Mirren.) Almost everything except the plot fuels the story, the plot is so small it would be easily lost in the garden these sisters keep. Place is massively important, and brilliantly recreated. Pace is massively important; these people lead simple, slow lives. Most of all, emotional nuance drives the bus here, Maggie Smith can say more with a furrowed brow than any ten Hollywood actors with a well-polished script.
The film invites adult viewers to take an adult look at the many different forms love takes, and their consequences. From the bitter and cynical aging doctor, to the painfully vulnerable and naive Ursula, Dench, to the cool yet kind Janet, Smith, this film weaves leitmotifs with such a deft hand you barely notice. The young man, Andrea, is played adequately by Daniel Bruhl, while Olga, young, manipulative, and ambitious, is the girl everyone loves to hate because she seems to have it all. Olga is played by Natascha McElhone. Ms. McElhone is fortunate to have been blessed with model-esque good looks; if you look carefully you can see her being out-acted by a footstool, a washstand, and a pair of knitting needles.
Those who enjoy metaphor and symbolism will not have to meditate overly long before realizing that the love these aging sisters bestow on their innocent foundling is a give and take proposition. Ultimately they commit the greatest act of selflessness any person can, they must free their "child" and let him live. (Irony here since they are what used to be charmingly referred to as "barren.") In so doing, they allow a great talent to bloom - sharing it with the world. This brings us to the film's other star, Joshua Bell. Bell provides the actual violin virtuosity behind the scenes, and his technique and range are chilling - from barn dance sawing rowdy enough to set the Strad on fire, to subtle trills that could make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Yes!
 Call it, Two Sisters, that would have brought in more patrons April 3, 2007
Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States)
5 out of 17 found this review helpful
For a great actress, Dench has made more bad films than anyone since Helen Hayes, and this is pretty much the bottom of the barrel, but I can see that at Amazon it's immensely popular among a vocal claque of fans. What's up with that? My guess is that everybody loves the delicate, nuanced byplay between Janet (Maggie Smith) and Ursula (Dench) as the two elderly sisters who sleep side by side in their exquisite Cornwall house, and the fat maid, played by redoubtable ham Miriam Margolyes, is also a hit among the fans who like her being bawdy and Shakespearean towards the two sisters and the young male visitor, who "hasn't got anything she hasn't seen before."
People also seem to like movies set in the past, and 1936 smudges the edges into a faded romance. To me, this picture is exactly like NOTES ON A SCANDAL, in which Dench also falls in love with a young beauty decades her junior, except here it's played like something out of a fairy tale. The young man appears on the strand, near dead, they take him in, they play cavaliers to his sleeping beauty. NOTES ON A SCANDAL, however, at least took the time to establish the back story of its characters. Here we know absolutely nothing about Andrea, the handsome young Pole, except that he's charming, roguish, and can play the violin very beautifully. (Wouldn't it have been a great casting coup if Charles Dance had let US violinist Joshua Bell, who provides the soundtrack, take the part? He's movie star handsome and Andrea, after all, didn't have to be Polish, did he? He could have been shipwrecked from America too!) (Maybe deaf and dumb to provide the element of mystery Dance seems to require for Andrea's character!)
This movie did not do well, but that's probably because no man in his right mind would go to a multiplex and say, "Umm, yes, two for 'Ladies in Lavender' please." I'd rather kill myself than utter those words. It would be easier to buy a case of Tampax at a busy Wal Mart. But on DVD perhaps some men will enjoy the picture. Poor Maggie Smith, I hope they paid her a lot of money because in every scene, Judi Dench reaches out her little paw and steals it.
I think also that Dance forgot to tell Natascha McWhatever her name is that the movie is set in the 1930s.
MrB March 8, 2007
Boyd Z. Palmer (Maine)
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Excellent vehicle for Dench - I get all her films if I can. She is tender and believable in this one.
Charmed by Ladies in Lavender January 22, 2007
G. Price (N. California)
11 out of 13 found this review helpful
Ladies in Lavender is a rare gem in the movie world of today. This is a soft spoken tale that ignores age and looks to character. Beautiful roles for older women may be hard to find these days and when a movie comes along with two such roles you could not ask for anything better than to have two wonderful Ladies, Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, take on those roles. This movie was adapted from a short story of the same title but its silver screen life comes from the actors who played their parts to perfection.
The movie takes place in a small Cornish village where the viewer is given an immediate sense of isolation - perhaps isolation from life, from emotions and from vulnerabilities. The sisters Ursula and Janet Widdington, played by Dench and Smith, spend a quiet, uninvolved existence, venturing out rarely. But on one of their walks along the beach that they find a young man washed ashore after a storm. A bit befuddled they nevertheless take this young may into their home to help him recuperate. This one act of kindness leads to unexpected consequences for we see that age is not a barrier to unleashing emotions, feelings that have been hidden for so many years. It is the ability of Dench and Smith to portray these emotions, these feelings, for the camera that make this movie sing. And the melody of the movie is also carried nicely by the supporting roles played by Daniel Bruhl and Natascha McElhone. Together these actors make this move work on several levels to give the viewer a splendid evening's entertainment.
Ladies in Lavender January 20, 2007
D. Menges (Columbus Ohio)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
What a sweet story...whenever Dench and Smith are together, it's a keeper.
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