Poppy Shakespeare
“N” is a 13-year veteran of a North London psychiatric hospital, and she doesn’t want to change a thing about it. However, a turning point in her life arrives in a new patient, an elegant and temperamental black woman named Poppy Shakespeare who insists she’s not insane. This outstanding drama is an adaptation of Clare Allan’s best-selling novel, which Britain’s Guardian newspaper described as “Catch-22” meets “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” At once comic and tragic, lyrical and absurd, the story takes an inside look at a claustrophobic, upside-down world in which reality intermingles with fantasy and reason with insanity. Poppy Shakespeare takes on great modern themes: madness and sanity, the institution and the individual, and psychotropic medicine and human consciousness. It also addresses the responsibility we relinquish when we allow a body of any kind to dictate the terms of our lives, and the responsibility we undertake when we love someone or are loved by them.
Cast & Crew
Director: Benjamin Ross
Producer: Charles Steel, Alasdair Flind
Editor: David Charap
Screenwriter: Sarah Williams, based on the novel by Clare Allan
Cinematographer: Danny Cohen
Awards: Santa Barbara Film Festival 2009 (Best Film)
Music: Molly Nyman, Harry Escott
Principal Cast: Anna Maxwell Martin, Naomie Harris, Adrian Scarborough, Tessa Peake Jones, Jonathan Cullen, Joseph Altin
Filmography: Guilty Hearts (2005); The Young Poisoner's Handbook (1995);
World Sales: Contentfilm International
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(2 reviews)
user reviews
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Be careful what you pretend to be ..., Jun 11, 2009
By Mimi Noyes
“This film is good but ... confusing. For one, while it is in English I found the British accents difficult to understand about 30-40% of the time, which means that I surely missed important things. For the other, the story is told from the perspective of the admittedly (literally and figuratively)”
… full review
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To prove you are sane, you might even feign madness, Jun 15, 2009
By William H Davis
“This film is a well-grounded tale of cattle-call mental health care colliding with bottom-line HMO management. Patients are being thrown back onto the streets to meet treatment 'efficiency' quotas, yet the vibrant Poppy, mistakenly committed, soon feels trapped on the ward and increasingly”
… full review
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