by Anne van Oorschot

08.10.2021. For our last book before the summer, Essi had brought 3 choices, all of which had been made into a movie, the suggestion being to read the book and then watch the movie together. What a fun idea! We set a date for the movie in September but ended up having to postpone due to…generational challenges. This I must explain, of course!

I, Anne-the-dinosaur, watch movies on Netflix or via a DVD, while Essi, who is young and hip, streams everything and doesn’t even have a DVD player. We would watch the film at my place, Anne’s, on my reasonably big smart TV but, due to an unexpected conflict, Essi could not attend. Since I felt that streaming a film was not something I was sure I could manage on my own and this older film was not quickly available any other way, we postponed to a later date. A hilarious step in our book-to-film adventure I think. 😊

We planned to watch the movie on a Friday evening and I made a double batch of popcorn, had a variety of beverages available and Essi bit the bullet and ordered a DVD to make sure there were no problems (it was a Spanish version, but spoken English was also available). We had a really nice turnout with 8 members joining and settled down to watch the film. It was a funny film, if a bit dated (from 1972) and it was fun to see the leading lady, Maggie Smith,  so young!

While a film version is always different than the book, we were surprised with the radical changes made in the film. All ended well with Mr. Visconti, the romantic interest of the Aunt in the book and the 2 danced off into the sunset together; but in the film, he tricked her into giving him a huge sum of money and then walked away laughing. Very surprising. Fortunately, once glasses were refilled, there were other things for our interesting group to talk about: getting settled in Tilburg, the addictiveness of chocolate covered pepernoten, the origins of TIC, and the richness and comy the street as all headed home, I was so happy with the TIC members who had made my weekend start out so perfectly!

Check out our movie review of The Gentlemen!