keeping mum

Director: niall johnson

Actor: rowan atkinson,kristin scott thomas,maggie smith,patrick swayze

Data Published: Fri Dec 02 2005

Genres: Comedy,Crime

Key Words: female nudity,letter writing,american,adulterous wife,trunk

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0444653/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Mum

Description: Keeping Mum is a movie starring Rowan Atkinson, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Maggie Smith. A pastor preoccupied with writing the perfect sermon fails to realize that his wife is having an affair, and his children are up to no good.

Plot: In the opening scene, as young pregnant Rosie Jones (Emilia Fox) rides on a train, her very large suitcase starts leaking blood. When questioned by the police about the two dismembered bodies found inside, she calmly reveals that they are of her unfaithful husband and his mistress. She is then sentenced by the judge (Roger Hammond) to a secure unit for the criminally insane for manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Forty-three years later, in the village of Little Wallop, Walter Goodfellow, the vicar (Rowan Atkinson) is very busy writing the perfect sermon for a convention, having no idea about the problems in his house. They include the unfulfilled emotional needs of his wife Gloria, (Kristin Scott Thomas) who subsequently starts an affair with her golf instructor, Lance (Patrick Swayze); the sexual desires and growing maturity of his teenage daughter, Holly (Tamsin Egerton) who is constantly finding new boyfriends; and son, Petey (Toby Parkes) who is being bullied at school. Then, everything changes with the arrival of the new housekeeper, Grace (Maggie Smith). Grace becomes entrenched in the life of the family and begins to learn about the problems in the house: the neighbour, Mr. Brown's dog Jack Russell terrier, Clarence, who consistently disturbs Gloria's sleep by his nuisance barking; the bullying of Petey; and Gloria and Lance's affair. Grace commits to solving the problems in her own way. She kills Clarence, and when Mr. Brown finds out that his dog has been murdered (after long assuming he had run off), she kills him, too. She sabotages the brakes on the bullies' bicycles, injuring one of them, thereby making Petey very happy. After catching the golf instructor outside the house videotaping Holly undressing one night, she kills him with an iron. While Walter is preparing his sermon for the conference, Grace introduces him to humour and suggests adding it to his preaching method. Further, she discovers that he has let his relationship with his wife slide on account of his devotion to God, and she teaches him that he can love his wife as well as God by drawing his attention to the erotic references in the Song of Solomon. As the problems in the household seem to gradually clear, Walter leaves for his convention. Grace’s habits are discovered when Gloria and Holly see her picture on television in a news story mentioning her release and previous offences. It is then that Grace reveals that she is Gloria's long-lost mother, Rosie Jones, explaining why she came to Little Wallop in the first place[further explanation needed]. After briefly processing the influx of information, Gloria argues and attempts to explain that when having a problem with someone, one cannot just kill them. Grace remarks that this is the one thing she and her doctors could never agree on. Despite their disagreements, Gloria tries to help Grace with Lance's body, but cannot handle it. Over a cup of tea, the three women decide not to tell Walter or Petey any of what has happened. When nagging congregant, Mrs. Parker (Liz Smith) comes over to discuss the problem of the “church flower arranging committee”, Grace, under the false (and likely paranoia-induced) impression that Mrs. Parker is about to turn them in for their crimes, attempts to hit her over the head with a frying pan, but is prevented by Gloria. Mrs. Parker, shocked by the attempt to murder her, ironically has a heart attack and dies. Walter returns from the convention just then and sees Mrs. Parker's body, but doesn't realise she is dead. Soon after this, Grace leaves the family when order is seemingly restored among the family. At the end of the film, Walter talks to Bob and Ted, the water works employees, about the pond at the Vicar's house. They say that there is too much algae and the pond needs to be drained. Remembering that Grace has disposed of her victims in the pond, Gloria, with a disturbingly cheerful expression, offers the two men some tea. The film closes with an underwater shot depicting the bodies that had been placed in the pond, including the recently added bodies of Bob and Ted.