Postcards with Love, On Chesil Beach

On Monday, May 23rd, the amazingly talented Eleanora from Coastal Crochet shared her design for her fabulous Postcards with Love blanket designed for King Cole. And considering that it is the prettiest blanket, I couldn’t resist joining in on the crochet along, also my first crochet along!

As I started the blanket, I realized how much of a crochet novice I really am, as I wasn’t familiar with many of the stitches! So in a way, this will be a lesson in crochet for me. It’s okay, I have Steven as my little helper.

This blanket has such beautiful colors, too, and I’m excited that I will now have a full rainbow of leftover yarn from this project when I’m done. Time to re-organize my yarn shelves!

I decided that since this blanket is inspired by postcards and British seaside towns, I wanted to watch something with the same vibe, and it seemed like On Chesil Beach would be a good choice for this. Set in Chesil Beach in Dorset, England in 1962, the story revolves around newlyweds Florence (Saoirse Ronan) and Edward (Billy Howle) spending their honeymoon on the beach. Expectations of the night bring turbulence with building anxiety of the pressure to consummate their marriage on their honeymoon. Meanwhile, the movie alternates between the couple’s backstory and the progressing night, drawing the viewer deeper into the story as the suspense increases.

With these flashbacks, we see a touching love story of two people who really care about each other, very believably portrayed by the fine acting of Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle. Yet their own insecurities, societal marital pressure, and an inability to communicate effectively leads them to a breaking point, which happens to take place in a gorgeous sprawling beach scene. This brings me to another virtue of the film, Sean Bobbitt’s cinematography is incredible, I’m definitely getting British beach vibes and a feel for the place.

After this, the film flashes forward to a future sequence just before the final poignant scene, and the entire ending demonstrates how important our relationship decisions can be, as well as the importance of thinking before reacting emotionally. On that note, I just have to say that the future scene with the characters made up to look older was really distracting for me, and not necessarily at the fault of this film, but filmmakers of the world, you never get the elderly make up scenes right, it always looks unrealistic and ter. ri. ble. I’d rather see different actors playing these parts. The future segment was an otherwise emotional scene, although out of place from the rest of the film.

On Chesil Beach was Dominic Cooke’s feature film directorial debut and the movie was based on the novella by Ian McEwan of the same name. It also stars Emily Watson, who I love, as Florence’s mother, Violet.

I give On Chesil Beach 6/10 balls of yarn. Now, what to watch for lovely week two… perhaps something more cheery if I can find it.

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