Calendar Girls (2003)***

Seen on 1-9-2009 - Zee Studi0 movie
Cast: Julie Walters (Annie Clark), Helen Murren (Chris Harper), et al
Dir.: Nigel Cole
"Calendar Girls is about the women of the Rylstone Women's Institute in North Yorkshire. This Women's Group produces a calendar each year based around scenes of the Yorkshire dales. In 1999, one of the ladies husbands became ill with leukemia. He would say that if the ladies planted Sunflowers, he'd make sure he'd get better so he could see them. Unfortunately, he didn't pull through and in order to raise funds for Leukemia research the women decided to make an alternative calendar of themselves in the nude hoping to sell a few hundred copies around their villages. This calendar in fact became a worldwide sensation, out-selling even those of Britney Spears and Cindy Crawford."IMDB summary.
We enjoyed this movie. The exploration of the ramifications of a bold out-of-box thinking is good. Husbands leave their wives using this as a pretext (as it happens in the case of Annie Clark's), misunderstandings develop in the family (as it happens in case of Chris Harper), snide and even vulgar remarks are heard all around, and people ridicule, but when the idea succeeds they become icons of worship and praise. Meanwhile, however, the ones who take the plunge suffer alienation.
This way this film is original and imaginative.