Luton to Leicester, 2017
Type of project: Film
Category: Director
Description: Luton to Leicester. Comedy. Drama. British. A Road Movie for the Third Age.
Recent widow Janet is happy to be alone in her grief, but her nephew Edward has other ideas. When he and his wife decide to take a luxury trip to India what better solution to their teenager- sitting problem than to get Janet and his mother Jo to do the job? Frankly, any other solution would suffice. Septuagenarians Janet and Jo have had a strained relationship since Jo popped off to London in the early 1960’s leaving her beau behind, only returning to find him engaged to Janet. But such ancient history means nothing to Edward, whose sole purpose is to get them together with the hope of unloading his difficult mother on Janet, who will invite Jo to abandon her Holland Park flat for the delights of Janet’s home in Luton, leaving said flat to his teenage kids. Poor Edward, expert money-maker, not so familiar with the human heart.
The ladies reluctantly start their journey from London to Leicester and things go swiftly downhill as Jo, determined to close the distance between her and Janet, has asked Edward to re-programme the Sat Nav down the back roads, hopefully giving her the space to start a reproachment, and the courage to reveal a long-held secret. But the best laid plans...
Things unwittingly take a turn for the farcical when Jo has an unfortunate encounter with a cowpat and they pull into a Petrol Station to repair the damage to her Armani Suit.
But the comedy turns dark as Ipshita, a young Indian girl used to smuggle illegal animals into the UK, escapes from her protector/ pimp, Keerthinath, into the briefly vacated car, and Janet and Jo drive off as unwitting accomplices to crime.
Thus ensues a chase of epic proportions as the pimp and a succession of incompetent local policemen race to see who can find the girl, and the comatose Monitor Lizard, and powdered rhino horn, first.
The sleepy villages of Bedfordshire and Leicestershire, complete with their traditional customs and quaintness, form the backdrop to our adventure and an uneasy alliance between Jo, who would secretly love a return to days of the British in India, and Ipshita. Road rage meets Raj Rage, culminating in a skirmish of insane proportions as the rhino horn is mistaken for cocaine, and the Monitor gets a little intimate with Jo’s lizard skin handbag. And as they approach Leicester, they run smack into Modern Britain in the middle of a massive Diwali celebration featuring Ipshita’s namesake, Goddess Lakhsmi and all.
After a brush with death, Jo’s secret is revealed, and the sisters find a new cause: the creation of a new and different family with Ipshita, and the search for the long lost daughter of Jo and John that will bind them all together.
East is East, West is West - but in Luton to Leicester the twain DO meet, in a funny and moving celebration of multiculturalism and humanitarianism in present day UK.
