Wartime ‘Land Girls’ Aims for the Heart

When World War II broke out in 1939, Britain revved up its Women’s Land Army, founded in 1917 during World War I to recruit young women to take over the plows when farmers went off to the battlefields. Over the years, 100,000 women became part of the WLA, which was not disbanded until 1950.

“The Land Girls,” adapted from Angela Huth’s well-received 1994 novel by writer-director David Leland and co-writer Keith Dewhurst, is a sure-fire heart-tugger that resonates with American audiences, especially those of us old enough to remember life on the home front, even if we were only children at the time. It was an era when people really pulled together, to a large extent laying aside “for the duration” differences in race, class and gender for the war effort.

“The Land Girls” is an old-fashioned women’s picture but told with a candor not possible in the movies of its time. World War II marked the beginning of a social revolution in which women began to consider alternatives to their traditional roles as housewives and mothers.

The war, of course, was a time of terrific emotional upheaval and uncertainty; young people of conventional backgrounds were tempted to throw aside strictures against premarital sex and to question whether they really loved those whom they were supposed to marry.

Against this backdrop, three beautiful young women--Stella (Catherine McCormack), Ag (Rachel Weisz) and Prue (Anna Friel) become Land Girls assigned to a farm belonging to the Lawrences (Tom Georgeson and Maureen O’Brien) in the gorgeous English countryside. Engaged to a naval officer, Stella is a banker’s daughter. Ag is a virginal Cambridge graduate, superficially a bit of a snob, and Prue is a hairdresser, the earthiest and most realistic of the three. Since he is so badly needed at the farm, the Lawrences’ hearty, handsome son Joe (Steven Mackintosh) has delayed enlisting in the Air Force.

Even with the arrival of our trio, “The Land Girls” keeps delaying Joe’s enlistment to the extent that the film spends precious little time with the women plowing the fields and lots more in the hayloft, where in time all three are eager to end up with Joe. Prue means to seduce the guy from the get-go and also decides he’s just the man to relieve Ag of her virginity. Stella, who has a personality clash with Joe, is naturally the one who falls for him the hardest--and vice versa.

“The Land Girls” plays out quite effectively with its potent blend of wartime romance, sacrifice and bravery in the face of inevitable tragic losses, and it benefits from its first-rate cast in largely well-drawn roles and its verdant natural locales.

But it’s a picture that doesn’t know when to quit while it’s ahead. There’s a moment when the camera pulls way, way back from Stella and Joe sitting in a field, at last confronting their feelings for each other fully, thereby arriving at a moment of truth that could have been the perfect signal for a fade-out of a modest but engaging film.

But no, “The Land Girls” goes on to pile on drastic developments and beyond that to a stiff-upper-lip epilogue in which the women gather again at a christening and all turn up in extreme versions of the New Look. By the time it’s over, “The Land Girls” has lapsed into soap opera.

* MPAA rating: R, for some sexuality. Times guidelines: The film’s themes and situations, including war casualties, are too intense for young children.

‘The Land Girls’

Catherine McCormack: Stella

Rachel Weisz: Ag

Anna Friel: Prue

Steven Mackintosh: Joe

A Gramercy Pictures release of an Anglo-French co-production between Greenpoint Films Ltd. and Camera One/Arena. Director David Leland. Producer Simon Relph. Executive producer Ruth Jackson. Screenplay by Leland & Keith Dewhurst, from Angela Huth’s novel. Cinematographer Henry Braham. Editor Nick Moore. Costumes Shuna Harwood. Music Brian Lock. Production designer Caroline Amies. Art director Frank Walsh. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Westside Pavilion, 10800 W. Pico Blvd., (310) 475-0202.