I think I'll try that whiskey-gin-together thing.

What makes us love a film? Is it the actors? The protagonists in it? The story or messages conveyed? What it is that holds us in its spell we must find out for ourselves, people are different right? I, regarded from who I am, recently came across a film that turned out to be a gem. The film I'm going to talk about had and still has a powerful aftereffect on me and my views on certain things. 

The Girl in the Café is a rather lovely title for the film, and it is where everything starts. In a café in buzzing London, on a quite normal work- intensive day. This is Lawrence. 

Lawrence Montague is a civil servant working in the team of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He happens to spend a very rare and short break of work in a café nearby. There he meets Gina Taunton because there is only one unoccupied seat left, and that is at her table. Just then, right at the first minutes into the film, I could see a lot about Lawrence. And what I saw was undoubtedly stunning. 

Even before he started talking I noticed his body language. He squats at the very edge of the seat, ready to run away at any second. His words are that of a well-educated and knowledgeable man, very politely spoken and excellently mannered. And nonetheless he is all discomfort, oddness, and somewhat on guard. He hardly looks Gina in the eyes when a light conversation arises between the two. It goes like this, and I consider it strikingly lovely in its Britishness and unobtrusive  interaction. This is their starting point.

G: That's a lot of sugar.
L: It's been quite a tough day.
G: The worse your day the more sugar you have?
L: Yes. Well, within certain limits. Never higher than four. Even on the worst days.  

In the end Lawrence must return to work, and he does a thing he had never thought possible. He asks a stranger, a woman he does know nothing about, out for lunch in two weeks from that day. His surprise when Gina says yes is priceless. Lawrence is so not used to positive reactions that he cannot believe it at first. And Gina? Well, I have not seen a sadder woman at the outlook of some nice company and a lunch date. 

What follows are a few more restaurant meetings, and both start to enjoy each other's momentarily presence in their lives. At one of these occasions, a dinner, Lawrence tells Gina that he will be going away to be in service at the G8 conference that will be held in Reykjavik. Gina is clueless of what that means and, once again, a pretty sweet and witty dialogue emerges.

G: ​The only thing I know about Reykjavik is that Björk comes from there. 
L: Who?
G: The coolest woman on the planet. 
L: Well, wow. The only thing I know about it is that's where Bobby Fisher played Boris Spassky in the greatest chess match of all time. Perhaps it's a place about which everyone knows only one fact. 
G: Maybe we should ask the waiter, then we'd have three facts?

For me, this is very sympathetic, downright humorous, and winning me over with surprising ease. When Lawrence is home he, after some tenacious inner struggle of summoning his bravery, calls Gina and asks her if she would mind coming to Iceland with him. Gina again gives her consent to accompany Lawrence to Reykjavik, and he indeed feels like being asked by Mick Jagger and Ron Wood to inject a bit of new blood into their band! Heavily powerful guitar sounds of the Rolling Stones set in when Lawrence performs a bouncer after Gina said yes. Hilarious and great!

Reykjavik is our next stop. From there, apart from being captured by two wonderful people, an important subplot of the story makes its way into our hearts too. Gina, and therefore we get a feel for him, learns more and more about Lawrence who opens up completely. By the way, ever wondered  what members of a G8 country delegation talk about when they are among themselves? They mock each other. 

Ruth: I don't understand French at all. Everyone of them speaks English, but will they speak at the summit? You're talking to them at dinner in perfect English, but the moment they are moved towards a microphone they immediately switch back to French.
Robert: It's a matter of principle, Ruth. They still don't accept that French is still not the world's dominant language. And they are very cross that Spielberg has made more popular films than Truffaut...very angry that Coldplay have played all over the world, but no one buys Johnny Hallyday outside of Paris. 

Oh dear, oh dear.

There are of course some other adorable scenes between Gina and Lawrence, I was amazed by how they occurred and how human they were. I could not escape their charm, simply impossible for me. 

​G: I'm sorry I used both the big towels.
L: No really, don't worry, I'll be fine. I'm not really a big towel kind of guy.

However, something greater is at work here. Lawrence introduces Gina to the topics negotiated at the G8, and it is startling to recognise how little we sometimes care and how easily we ignore facts just because they are not present right at our front doors. A big issue is the poverty in many countries of our world, a poverty that is responsible for a dying child every three seconds. The film, if you try to be really attentive, is in fact referring to this three seconds in a constant but very subtle way. For example, by closing the restaurant a waitress switches off the lamps at the already abandoned tables in a rhythm of every three seconds. A way that stuck with me ever since I have watched this sequence in the film. 

With every day passing, Lawrence comes back from the summits more and more disenchanted and bare any hope. His steps get heavier every day, his movement gets slower and more tired as the conference wears on. The issues he wanted to resolve slip from the top of the agenda to the bottom. Gina sees his unhappiness with the procedure, and she stands up for him. The modus operandi she has chosen is unexpected, even dangerous for Lawrence. At several gatherings in public she asks the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chancellor of Germany, demanding some explanations and reminding the leaders of their tasks. Everything culminates at the final dinner before the goals must be pushed for a last time and decisions must be reached by the committee of the powerful G8. Please listen to Gina's speech. 

At her performance Gina yet again appears infinitely sorrowful when she is talking. There is no passion in her voice, no fighting behaviour. Why is that? In the course of the film we don't learn much about Gina, and nevertheless I learned everything about a beautiful and very sensitive woman. What I did see was more than enough to fully understand her reasons. Please try to find out for yourself by watching the film. 

Neither Gina nor Lawrence want to be heroes, very far from it.  They are just like you and me and want to find their own contentment, a bit of happiness if you will. ​The film is, I believe,  as opposed to the focus on the political incorrectness that circulates in the media, not a film about politics. This is a film about seeing the real person beneath; seeing the beauty and the light they are carrying, a light that is perhaps not to  see in the first moments of encountering them. It is about caring for one another and trying to love as good as we can, may it be ever so unusual.

The film is undeniably about love; or something very close to love. The slightest feeling of warmth and understanding towards another person can be the catalyst of doing the greatest deeds. Speaking a bit louder for one another, just a little,  can set free a confidence and courage to pursue and keep on following the values we believe in.  Nobody, really, should have to feel surprised because they were noticed, or because people paid attention to them. There is something wrong if they do. Not with them, of course. There is something wrong with us. It is us who have failed them by being blind to who they are. Changing those wrongs is what love really means. It is the message of the film. If my need for silence after watching the film can be measured as a rating how good it was, then I will tell you that I highly appreciated some solitude because the impact on me was remarkable. 

​Be great instead of being ashamed, Gina's final words at the dinner with the leaders. This counts for everyone. Go for what is right for you and you will change the world. Yours, mine, and that of others. 

References: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_in_the_Café
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443518/
www.americanrhetoric.com