Jones lights up ‘Chalet Girl’
Chalet Girl
(Cert 12, 92 mins, Comedy/Drama/Romance,)
Tomboy skateboarding prodigy Kim Matthews (Felicity Jones) abandons the sport she loves after her life is touched by tragedy.
She accepts a position as an Alpine chalet attendant at the highly exclusive St Anton resort.
Within minutes of arriving, Kim is put in her place by resident queen bees Georgie (Tamsin Egerton) and Jules (Georgia King). However, the new girl makes an immediate impression on playboy Jonny Madsen (Ed Westwick), son of wealthy, jet-setting couple Richard (Bill Nighy) and Caroline (Brooke Shields), who are renting the chalet that Kim has been hired to maintain. Love across the class divide poses obvious problems plus there is the additional distraction of a 25,000 dollar first prize in the Roxy Slopestyle Pro snowboarding challenge, which reignites Kim’s competitive spirit.
Chalet Girl whisks up a cocktail of frothy romance and effervescent sporting triumph against adversity, garnished with an upbeat contemporary pop soundtrack of Scouting For Girls, Eliza Doolittle, Paloma Faith and Ellie Goulding.
Jones is completely believable as the grief-stricken good girl who struggles to fit into her rarefied new surroundings.
“I’m stuck in a parallel universe where everyone drinks my monthly salary in a night!” she despairs.
Egerton and King summon two more posh harpies from the repertoire and Bill Bailey milks easy laughs as Kim’s slovenly father who promises to bathe once a month.
But Phil Traill’s life-affirming comedy is predominantly a showcase for fast-rising star Jones and the Birmingham-born actress is luminous, effortlessly slaloming between slapstick and heart-tugging emotion in Tom Williams’s predictable yet unabashedly crowd-pleasing script.
Rating: 3/5.
