Movie review: Mrs Ratcliffe’s Revolution

It is 1968. Yorkshire schoolteacher Mr Ratcliffe,newly smitten by the Communist credo,takes himself and his family (reluctant but loving wife,two daughters,and an unemployed brother-in-law) to live in Germany. Needless to say,it is the East,where citizens live in dreary buildings,lead strictly regimented lives,and spy upon each other. Mr Ratcliffe (Ian Glenn) thinks he is in heaven; so does his little daughter,who loves marching and tale-telling. Mrs Ratcliffe (Catherine Tate),though,knows better.

‘Mrs Ratcliffe’s Revolution’,as the name suggests,is about a determined housewife’s struggle to get her family out: of a place in which lives a sexy iron maiden (Heike) intent upon gobbling up her naïve husband,and her gullible younger girl. Other miserable souls,desperate to get out from behind the barbed wire separating the hellish East from the decadent West,gather together to make a dash for freedom,battling minefields,cockeyed blackmailers,and a one-legged smuggler.

There’s nothing revolutionary about the film. It’s the East as the West has always portrayed it,with just one of or two characters making an offhand remark in defence of their Nazified lifestyle. Pop music is frowned upon. The older Ratcliffe daughter is not allowed to listen to the radio. And as for marmite,it is clearly a fascist tool which will subvert all schoolchildren.

But,despite its predictable graph,the film stays watchable,essentially because of Mrs Ratcliffe’s doughty act: Tate sets her jaw and grabs the bit and goes at it. And needless to say,the West,marmite and all,wins out.