Review: Made in Dagenham, a film by Nigel Cole

There are certain things only the British can do in a certain way. Films is one of them.

It is a long-established tradition in British filmmaking to take a real (or believable) fact of more or less historical relevance and dark nature and turn it into an amiable portrait of working-class uplift (The Full Monty, Billy Eliot, Calendar Girls) or royal intimacy (The Queen, The Young Victoria). 

Americans can't help overstepping the mark sweetening reality, while continental Europeans can't smile slyly or remorselessly at social bleakness or at the shenanigans of their monarchs.

Two fact-based British films released during the last year, Tom Hooper's The King's Speech and Nigel Cole's Made in Dagenham, seamlessly slot into this mould by taking two mostly forgotten but significant facts of 20th century British history -George VI's speech impediment in the former, the 1968 strike by the Ford seamstresses that paved the way to the Equal Pay Act of 1970 in the latter- and transforming them into crowd-pleasing films.

The whole world, including a couple of well-known film academies, has succumbed to the charms of The King's Speech, while Made in Dagenham has been largely ignored by film award circles and audiences, and yet I think the account of the industrial strife between the Dagenham sewing machinists and the Ford company is a much more enjoyable film experience, maybe because a group of brave women ready to go to the picket line in demand of equality can move me more easily than the stammer of a dead monarch, or simply because, in my opinion, there are few things more uplifting than genuine female comradeship.

A key element to the film's success lies in its perfect cast, vigorously led by Sally Hawkins, who by toning down her flawless but inevitably annoying performance in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, proves that she is more than ready to be a leading lady. Here she is abetted by an engaging cast, including Bob Hoskins as the union rep, Geraldine James, that excellent character actress that everyday looks more like a younger sister of Vanessa Redgrave, as her friend and confidante in the plant, the gorgeous Rosamund Pike as the Cambridge graduate undervalued housewife and Miranda Richardson, who is a delight to watch in the juicy role of Secretary of State for Employment Barbara Castle.

Made in Dagenham is not a film where the viewer should look for historical accuracy or social realism, since every trace of bleakness and hardship has been unapologetically distilled into vivid and breezy optimism. Director Nigel Cole, who has managed to merge his previous film Calendar Girls with The Full Monty, the most prominent film of the genre, acknowledges the discrepancy between reality and his own account of the facts by inserting footage of the real seamstresses and the circumstances they lived in in the final credits of the film.

Regardless of that, it is difficult to find fault with anything in this truly engaging, jaunty film. Unquestionably, it is a firework of joyous filmmaking ignited by a spark of truth, but that fact doesn't prevent it from being, His Majesty permitting, the best feel-good movie of the year.