One of my All Time Favourite Movies - 8 out of 10

jmvscotland

Shirley Valentine is a movie that I can and do watch regularly; once or twice a year. As a result of this movie, I first went to Mykonos in 1993 and stayed a few KM from where the movie was filmed, basically around Manoulas Beach Hotel on the SE side of the island. In 1993, the area around there was very much as seen in the movie.

I have just come back from a second visit to Mykonos where I stayed with my friends just across the street from Manoulas Hotel; hasn't the area changed over the last 23 years. It is much more built up now and is difficult in some ways to recognize. However, the fact that the area has changed doesn't detract for me from the pleasure of watching the movie again and again.

Pauline Collins and Tom Conti are just excellent particularly together and Bernard Hill is also very good as poor boring old Joe.

Shirley Valentine spoke to my heart even before I first went to Mykonos in '93. She spoke to me because I was then living in Australia in a pretty loveless marriage and I was not very satisfied with life the way it was. I felt trapped in the marriage and I felt trapped in Australia, knowing that there was a great world away from Australia and away from everything that was far too familiar with me over the lifetime I had spent in Australia.

Five years ago, I learned that I could legally live in Thailand so, possibly too hastily, I decided to give up almost everything I had in Australia and move to Thailand. I've been living in Thailand for the last five years and I am largely very happy here. I have a beautiful and wonderful little Thai partner and all of the material things that we could possibly need to be comfortable.

So, I actually did the Shirley Valentine flit and I don't regret for a minute having done so. What the movie should teach us is that we all need to lives the lives that we want rather than the ones that circumstances might force upon us. It's scary to leave family and all that's familiar to us but my advice is that if you have an opportunity to do what Shirley and I have both done, be brave, don't look back and pursue it. Life could for so many people be so much better if they take their destiny into their own hands as I did.

Shirley Valentine changed my life for the better; I sincerely hope she can do the same for others.

JMV

score 8/10

jmvscotland 11 November 2016

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3578695/