Military Wives #FilmReview #BriFri
Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!
Last week, I reviewed Living, a 2022 film starring Bill Nighy. Tina shared a recipe for roasted tomatoes inspired by Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries.
We weren’t sure whether we’d like this film due to the subject matter. I’m leery of films that glorify war. But it turned out to be only a little about the military and a lot about how women come together to support each other in ways that are sometimes more successful than others.
Military Wives was released in 2019 but is set about 10 years earlier when British forces experienced regular deployments in Afghanistan, with more devastating impacts than anticipated. Each deployment leaves the military base emptied of men and filled with scared spouses who suddenly become single parents to their children.
There’s a system in place for mutual aid among military wives during deployment, however, and we get to watch that rev up.
I was somewhat familiar with that system because I had a relative who worked at Grissom Air Force Base during Operation Desert Storm in 1990 and 1991. They talked about how the military wives came together and, also, how the wider community supported them.
Kristin Scott Thomas (My Grandparents’ War, Darkest Hour) was the reason that I put this movie in our DVD queue at Netflix. Much of the entertainment in this movie is watching Thomas’s stuffy character, Kate, spar with the easier-going Lisa, played by Sharon Hogan.
The best moments, for me, though, were the more tender ones where the women were effective in their support for one another, even in the most horrible circumstances faced by military wives.
Watch Military Wives to laugh and cry and appreciate the value of relationships in good times and bad.