Oranges & Sunshine tells the story of Margaret Humphreys (Emily Watson), a social worker from Nottingham, who uncovered one of the most significant social scandals in recent times: the organised deportation of children in care from the United Kingdom to Australia.
Reviews
The Daily Mail
Chris Tookey
“This is a film that would be just as effective on television, and it’s probably too low-key and depressing to be a hit. The thrillerish aspects — menacing phone-calls, sinister priests — aren’t followed through. And it begs more questions than it answers about the abusers and government policy. All the same, this is a moving, thoughtful, grown-up film that’s a genuine eye-opener.”
01/04/2011
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Time Out
Dave Calhoun
“Loach has made a film uncluttered by an obvious director’s stamp, peopled by sympathetic characters and driven by a desire to say something about the world without losing sight of human experience. In casting Watson, he’s also secured a performance that boldly lacks vanity while exuding a strength that leads you confidently through difficult, troubling terrain.”
31/03/2011
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Variety
Richard Kuipers
“Auds may well be in tears just minutes into "Oranges and Sunshine," a deeply moving study of emotionally scarred adults who were illegally deported as children to Australia from Britain in the 1940s and '50s. Toplining a superb Emily Watson...”
10/10/2010
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The Observer
Philip French
“...a powerful, deeply moving, understated account of a major social injustice...”
03/04/2011
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The Times
Wendy Ide
“With this kind of solid, competently no-frills film-making, the emphasis falls automatically on to the script and the performances. But while the latter are mostly first-rate, the screenplay is less confident.”
01/04/2011
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Total Film
Neil Smith
“It’s a shocking saga to be sure. Yet it doesn’t quite translate as compelling drama, loach and scripter Rona Munro seeming cowed by the scale of the scandal and their terror of exploiting it.”
18/03/2011
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Empire Magazine
David Hughes
“In less sensitive hands, Oranges And Sunshine might have been the cinematic equivalent of misery-lit. Instead, it has a quiet power, but in its studious avoidance of melodrama, it’s almost too low key for its own good.”
01/04/2011
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The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
“Jim Loach's sombre, painful film packs a hard punch; harder than you'd expect from the soft-focus poster.”
31/03/2011
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The Independent
Anthony Quinn
“Cinematically, though, the film doesn't really work, dependent on undramatic scenes of Watson furrowing her brow over paperwork or facing down objections to her dirt-digging campaign.”
01/04/2011
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The Independent on Sunday
Nicholas Barber
“Oranges and Sunshine is a plodding, drab-looking chore which has facts and figures in place of dialogue, and plotlines which suggest, meekly, that they might be quite exciting, before they tiptoe away, never to be seen again.”
03/04/2011
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The Sunday Times
Edward Porter
“Yet the film’s brisk steps from one emotional flash point to another become monotonous. The facts of how parents and offspring are reunited are largely omitted, and a parent who in one scene is said to be untraceable appears a couple of scenes later. ”
03/04/2011
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The Financial Times
Nigel Andrews
“Emily Watson gives the only believable performance in a film beset by clunky dialogue and torpid mise-en-scène.”
30/01/2011
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