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British fiction is packed with stories of forlorn orphans being shipped off to live with stone-hearted relatives. “Cold Comfort Farm” satirizes those stories. This time, the dreadful relatives find their lives in an uproar; they get more than they expect and better than they deserve. The movie, based on the famous comic novel by Stella Gibbons, is dour, eccentric and very funny, and depends on the British gift for treating madness as good common sense.
As it opens, poor Flora Poste (Kate Beckinsale) has lost her parents, and been cast into the cruel world with only 100 pounds a year (“hardly enough to keep you in stockings and furs,” a rich friend observes). She writes to her relatives for a place to live and receives unencouraging replies (one uncle promises “plenty of hard life, surrounded by ruin on all sides”). Finally she decides to accept an invitation to live with the Starkadders, whose Cold Comfort Farm is well-named, an oasis of despair in a slough of despond.