FINDING YOUR FEET

Name: FINDING YOUR FEET
Item: FINDING YOUR FEET
Author: Steph Manthe

"Life Doesn’t Just End After 50"

Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

FINDING YOUR FEET tells a story of self-discovery. Lady Sandra discovers her husband has been having a five-year adulterous fling with a friend. So, she moves in with her estranged, bohemian sister, whom she hasn’t seen for 10 years. The sister helps Sandra rediscover what brought her joy when she was younger, things suppressed by her formal relationship with her controlling husband. Sandra meets a man her age at a dance class her sister frequents.

FINDING YOUR FEET starts slowly, but it’s heartwarming and endearing due to the actors and their chemistry with each other. Most viewers will relate to each character, despite any age differences. That said, FINDING YOUR FEET has a strong Romantic, unbiblical worldview with strong pagan elements. It supports a Romantic “whatever works for you” mentality, though it also paints a liberal, bohemian lifestyle as the best way to live. FINDING YOUR FEET has lots of foul language, some lewd and immoral behavior, and alcohol and marijuana use as a means of dealing with stress or problems. Ultimately, the movie is unacceptable, despite its few positive qualities.

Content:

(RoRo, PaPa, FR, B, Ho, LL, SS, N, AA, DD, MM):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Strong Romantic, unbiblical worldview with strong pagan elements, some false religion, some light moral elements, and some lesbian references, life is seen as an eternal stage of existence where only in one part of it do you live on the earth, a Buddha is displayed in front of a main character’s house, the Romantic idea that “what works for me may not work for you, and that’s okay” is espoused, a bohemian and eclectic lifestyle is the one portrayed as being right, good, joyful, fulfilling and freeing, one character has only had one life partner who was her husband, the second has never been married and sleeps around with anyone (both men and women), the third has had five divorces and is still open to getting married again, life is lived to the fullest when one isn’t constrained by rules or society, but merely has fun, sleeps with whomever they choose, goes wherever they want, all as long as one is truly being themselves;

Foul Language:

About 18 to 21 obscenities and some British expletives, plus a brief conversation between the sisters about the size of male genitalia;

Violence:

No physical violence, but one character dies from Stage 4 Lung Cancer, but whether or not that is from smoking is not revealed, and another character has severe Alzheimer’s Disease;

Sex:

Some strong and light sexual content and affirmations of sexual immorality include a man cheats on his wife, movie’s first five minutes show married man making out with the other woman in a closet, but they are fully clothed, older sister and her date have foreplay in the living room, sister starts dancing for man and take off her blouse to show her bra, sexual immorality is discussed when speaking of the older sister’s past and her current dating situation, sister has many one night stands and also refers to a short stint as a lesbian, and sister encourages “loose” sexual lifestyle;

Nudity:

No explicit nudity but protagonist’s sister is dancing for her date and takes her shirt off and reveals a sheer black bra showing a slight midriff, protagonist’s bare shoulders seen in a bathtub filled with bubbles, and two scenes of older women in one-piece bathing suits swimming in a river;

Alcohol Use:

During movie’s first half the protagonist tries to cope with her husband’s cheating by drowning herself in alcohol and some form of alcohol is seen in almost every scene in the beginning, drunken protagonist creates a scene in a restaurant and is taken to the police station and sleeps off the drunkenness there, after a successful event characters celebrate with dancing and one drink for each of them, being an alcoholic is not celebrated though it is not reprimanded, there is the suggestion that there is more to life than drinking, and drinking is portrayed as a way of coping with life’s problems;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

Smoking depicted in the background of five scenes, there’s an exchange of marijuana in four scenes, one scene depicts two characters as being high, another scene shows three characters smoking marijuana to “release stress,” two scenes show the drug in a small package being delivered to a character;

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Strong miscellaneous immorality includes lying by a few characters, wealthy protagonist is a snob with some apparent racist tendencies, but she overcomes these flaws through the course of the story, moral relativism is seen between two sisters who have very different definitions of what living life to the fullest means (much of this is structured around a sister who follows rules and is wealthy versus one who heeds no rule and lives a very bohemian lifestyle), revenge seen in a character getting over her loss and destroying the property of the person who took that away from her, a dysfunctional family is portrayed in two areas (one area is the byproduct of a divorce and the other involves the 10-year estrangement of two sisters for differences of beliefs).

More Detail:

FINDING YOUR FEET is a British bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story, but this coming-of-age doesn’t track a teenager or young adult but rather a woman over 65. It follows the story of Lady Sandra (Imelda Staunton), who after becoming a lady due to her husband receiving a lordship for his affairs with the government, discovers that same day her husband has been having a five-year affair on her with one of her closest friends.

In this drastic wake-up call, Lady Sandra moves out and goes to the only family she has left: her older, and 10-year estranged sister, Elizabeth or “Bif” for short (Celia Imrie). Bif represents everything Lady Sandra has been groomed against in her marriage. Lady Sandra is a lady by all intents and purposes. She’s conservative, wealthy, esteemed by society, stable, always controlled, characterized by manners and propriety. Her sister on the other hand is the classic example of a liberal bohemian: free-spirited, counter-cultural, eclectic when it comes to style and belief systems, loose morals and behaviors, and, commonly associated with this lifestyle, has a more fun and a joyful life.

After Lady Sandra moves into her sister’s home, she goes into a drunken frenzy, until she finally accepts the help of her older sister to “find her feet again.” Bif tells her sister to loosen up and helps her to do so by showing an old family video, one that reveals Lady Sandra’s long-lost hobby of dancing. It so happens that “Bif” is taking a dance class with her older friends every Thursday. So, she invites her younger sister to come along. This experience brings Lady Sandra back to a past she had long-buried due to the restrictions her marriage and husband laid upon her.

Throughout the rest of the movie, the audience meets a cast of loveable characters who, through their own choices and the life served to them, choose to find joy in the little things. They choose, in the midst of loss, heartache, loneliness, and sickness, to cling together and have fun. Their camaraderie and support are found mainly through attending the dance class with one another.

FINDING YOUR FEET also sets up the age-old class struggle between the stiff, wealthy upper-class person with narrow-minded views versus the free and bohemian lower-class person with progressive attitudes. It begs several questions. Will having all the money in the world bring the most joy? What makes life most fulfilling? How does one find oneself? How can one recover when life seems irrecoverable?

FINDING YOUR FEET starts slowly and is somewhat predictable, but most viewers probably will soon find themselves relating to each character (even though they may be decades older), because their struggles aren’t uncommon to people at almost any age. Imelda Staunton gives a wonderful performance as Lady Sandra, alongside other appealing performances by Timothy Spall as Sandra’s new love interest and Celia Imrie as her bohemian, pot-smoking sister.

That said, FINDING YOUR FEET has a strong Romantic worldview with strong pagan elements. Thus, the movie supports a “whatever works for you” mentality, though it also paints a liberal, bohemian lifestyle as the truly freeing way to live. As such, it inserts some politically correct themes in its depiction of the class conflict mentioned above. In addition, marijuana is seen as a way of reducing stress. Also, alcohol is pictured as a way of coping with bad or unsettling life problems, even though Sandra clearly goes too when she uses alcohol to overcome the terrible news that her husband’s been cheating on her for five years with a friend. Finally, a few characters are portrayed as being sexually loose, and Sandra’s sister is depicted as bisexual.

Ultimately, therefore, despite its feel-good ending, FINDING YOUR FEET has an unacceptable, unbiblical Romantic worldview depicting some unacceptable behavior. However, it also encourages positive interpersonal relationships between friends and family members as well. So, it’s not totally abhorrent.

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Quality:

- Content: -3