Janet Vokes, a former whippet breeder and pigeon fancier from the depressed Welsh village of Cefn Fforest organises a community syndicate to buy a racehorse. The drinkers at Jan’s local chipped in a weekly £10 sub and their horse, symbolically called Dream Alliance, wound up winning the Welsh Grand National, basically making it the Seabiscuit of the valleys.
Toni Collette (as Jan) and Owen Teale (as her husband Brian), with Damian Lewis playing Howard Davies, the local tax accountant and breezy man-of-the-world whose dangerously addictive love of horseracing inspires Jan. The resulting movie may be a bit schmaltzy – actually, a lot schmaltzy – but you cannot help enjoying it: like Chariots of Fire, only with horses.
This movie gets a real gallop on, due to the sheer warmth of its performances. Collette, that perennially excellent actor who utterly inhabits every part, gives us a wonderfully approachable Jan: shy, yet tough and determined. Lewis is robust and yet very sympathetic as the rakish Howard who has come very close in the past to losing his shirt to the sport of kings. And it is a treat to see Joanna Page as Howard’s wife Angela and a cameo for Siân Phillips as Maureen, a local woman with a passion for Tunnock’s Tea Cakes.
Link to trailer on YouTube.com
Advanced tickets will be on sale from 3rd January 2022 exclusively from Wayne Pullen, Butcher, in High Street, Milborne Port. Advance tickets are £5.00 each (no concessions).
Tickets will be available on the door, priced at £6.00 each, no concessions.
A limited alcoholic bar will be available selling beer and a selection of wines.