Black Mountain Poets (film)

Two sisters on-the-run for petty crimes hide out at a poetry retreat in the Black Mountains, Wales impersonating the world renowned poets whose car they stole.[2]

• Alice Lowe as Lisa Walker
• Dolly Wells as Clare Walker
• Tom Cullen as Richard
• Rosa Robson as Louise Cabaye
• Richard Elis as Gareth
• Laura Patch as Stacey
• Hannah Daniel as Alys Wilding
• Claire Cage as Terri Wilding

The film marked the third in a trilogy of films by Newport Film School graduate Jamie Adams about modern love, after 2014’s Benny & Jolene and A Wonderful Christmas Time.[3] The film was shot in five days on location in the Welsh Black Mountains.[4]

The film had its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2015.[5] The film had a limited UK cinema release in April 2016.[6][7]

Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian said the film was “flimsy, funny…very silly and likeable” noting that “there are some big laughs, particularly from Alice Lowe” but with little “narrative plausibility”.[8] Guy Lodge in Variety said “Alice Lowe and Dolly Wells are a riot” and described a “deftly escalated farce as humane as it is hilarious”.[9] Neil Young in the Hollywood Reporter saw a “slight but likeable…uneven, shoestring-budgeted charmer” and praises cinematographer Ryan Owen Eddleston‘s demonstrations of the “alluringly elemental Welsh countryside” and praises the performances of Lowe and Wells but feels the film underuses Hannah Daniel and Clare Cage who “are consistently hilarious in their fleeting, intermittent appearances as the bemused, bohemian-bard [Wilding] babes.[10] David Jenkins in Little White Lies (magazine) praises Lowe saying “watching this film is a simple case of waiting for Alice Lowe to appear on screen. If everyone in the cast gives a solid seven out of 10, she’s easily a 12. The camera naturally gravitates towards her, wise to the fact that her reaction to a line of dialogue will likely be funnier than the dialogue itself. She’s hilarious, casually outclassing her fellow players. Even the way she wears a hat is amusing.” Jenkins felt though that the film begins to run out of steam after 30 minutes and the laughs dry up as it transitions from crime caper plot to romance, saying “in its blind search for profundity, it’s a film which loses sight of what makes it interesting in the first place.”[11]

Black Mountain Poets at IMDb