The best part of ex-Royal Air Force squadron leader Reggie Cunningham-Jarvis's life was obviously World War II (just ask anyone at his local pub), when he and his comrades won the Battle of Britain from the cockpits of Spitfire fighter planes. After that, Reggie (Albert Finney) married into money and didn't do much else for the next 40 or so years, except turn into his own, blustering idea of a pillar of English resoluteness. 

Meanwhile, a fellow veteran, Roy Southgate (Tom Courtenay), who saw the war from the ground, spent his productive years quietly as a milkman, devoted husband, and tragically failed father. When the wives of each of these men die on the same day in the same hospital room, an unlikely bond is established, leading to an experiment in shared housing with a spurious yet, for Reggie and Roy, somehow comforting class division between them. 

This very rewarding British comedy-drama, based on a novel by Angela Lambert, is rich in character, beautifully crafted dialogue, and vital performances from two of the finest actors in the world. Just to gild the lily, Joanna Lumley (Absolutely Fabulous) is cast as one of the most sympathetic gold diggers in film history, but the real hook here for movie fans is the reuniting of Finney and Courtenay in roles not terribly dissimilar to those they played in the 1983 hit The Dresser. Not just for Anglophiles, A Rather English Marriage is a touching, vigorous delight. --Tom Keogh