The plotline concerns the efforts of a Texas oil tycoon to purchase a Scottish fishing village, lock, stock, and barrel, as the site for a mammoth refinery. But plot is not the main thing here. This is a movie of character and, even more, of setting, and of the effect of the latter on the former. It is a movie in which such travel-book epithets as "charming" and "enchanting" are taken quite literally and followed through to their logical extreme. There would be nothing unusual about seeing such a place exploited on screen for its scenic values, though there is something unusual about such values not being overinflated, not being compacted into pristine, postcard views. What makes the depiction most unusual, however, is the attention paid to the transforming effects of places on people, similar to (and oftentimes connected to) the make-over effect of a new set of clothes. The effect is made primarily on an $80,000-per-annum junior executive from Texas, who describes himself at the outset as "more of a telex man," and secondarily on his British-branch colleague, who subordinates business pursuits to the recreational pursuit of an elusive water nymph who must be in some small part mermaid -- as her webbed toes would tend to attest. The initial stages of their sojourn are summed up, in large measure, by the visual incongruity of their suits, ties, and briefcases against the local backdrop of beaches, rocks, and sea: one can't help but think of accounts of Richard Nixon trudging along the sands of San Clemente in blue serge suit. The Texan, in the later stages, moves gradually toward pull-overs and beard stubble. His British counterpart remains more partial to suits, but this is not a deterrent, at last, to his wading neck-deep into the surf. The overall drift of the movie, to put it in a larger context, is away from any but the most oblique social comment and toward the more durable interests of human -- and Mother -- nature. With Peter Riegert and Burt Lancaster; written and directed by Bill Forsyth. (1983) — Duncan Shepherd
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