Black Mountain Poets movie review: rhyme and unreason

Two con-artist sisters on the run from the law steal a car and figure that where its owners were headed is as good a destination as any… perhaps not the wisest of moves, but Lisa and Claire are pretty impetuous. So now they have to pretend to be the Wilding sisters, the guests of honor at a “spiritual retreat” run by the “Poet’s Poetry Society” in the Black Mountains of Wales. This, the third semi-improvised feature film from director Jamie Adams, is a tasty treat of gentle but wise humor that is forgiving of the foibles of the overearnest scribes the women ape even as it satirizes them. And though its sympathies are with the sisters, they are of the tough-love sort, and much the same could be said for the relationship of the messed-up sisters as well: they are devoted to each other but know how to cut each other deeply too, as starts happening here when both instantly fancy handsome and artistically tormented poet Richard (Tom Cullen: Weekend). You can almost hear the film fret a little whimper at its own suggestion that pretending be someone else might be a good way to figure out who you really are; maybe, it might also hasten to add, don’t take this as a life plan for yourself, and consider only that it’s a really good bad idea for these two women, whom you wouldn’t want to emulate anyway. Surpassingly sly performances by Dolly Wells (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) as Claire and Alice Lowe (Paddington) as Lisa make this a shrewd, deceptively relaxed tandem character sketch full of unforgettable moments: you may never look at a grocery receipt the same way again after hearing Lisa brilliantly recite one as poetry.