Forsythe Forsooth

Can you believe we haven't seen Local Hero (1983) until now? We saw Gregory's Girl long, long ago, and That Sinking Feeling in theater when it was released in the US (anyone else? No?). So we were low-key Bill Forsyth fans. But Forsyth is pretty low-key, so that fits.

It stars Peter Riegert (of recent film quiz fame) as a young go-getter in a Texas oil firm. He is sent to Scotland to buy out a small town so that they can put replace the bay with a refinery. The president of the company, Burt Lancaster, asks him to watch the sky for comets or anything else unusual.  He’s an amateur astronomer, and a bit of a nut. Riegert doesn’t really like meeting in person - he’s more of a telex man. But it’s a good opportunity and from the glimpse we get of his empty life, there’s nothing to keep him from going.

In Scotland, he meets his local partner, Peter Capaldi (just a kid here) and a gorgeous marine biologist Jenny Seagrove, who is studying a scale model of the bay. Good name for the actor, because we rarely see her out of the water.

In the village, he meets inn owner and unofficial village headman Denis Lawson (kind of a Scottish Stephen Rae) and his lusty wife Jennifer Black. He doesn't quite realize it, but the villagers are very willing to sell up, as long as they get rich off of it. It's a beautiful village, but as they say, you can't eat scenery.

So we have Capaldi falling in love with Seagrove while Riegert is falling in love with the village he is set on destroying. He starts noticing the sky, including meteors and northern lights. When Lancaster finally shows up to see the situation for himself, what will happen to everyone?

It's a sweet story with interesting characters who aren't all they seem. Lawson and the villagers in particular aren't rubes or canny primitives. They love their village but would like to be rich enough to live somewhere warm. There's a Russian trawler captain who comes through with some semi-smuggled goods who has Lawson manage some financial investments for him, and so forth. And it ends with everyone happy, except maybe Riegert, who has to go back to his life.

Note: The soundtrack is Mark Knoepfler on guitar. It's lovely and unobtrusive.