MOVIE REVIEW – Chalet Girl
Movies for the down days | Tessa Cook
Chalet Girl exceeded my expectations. It uses sometimes quite dry wit to play on the stereotypes of the absurd European chalet lifestyle and throws in some slapstick hilarity, mountain vistas, snowboarding action and Ed Westwick. As a movie for those down days, when you’re tied, injured or just plain lazy it ticks some boxes.
The Chalet Girl of the title is Kim, champion skateboarder turned full time fast food outlet attendant due to tragic circumstances. Needing money and wanting a change Kim applies for a job as a live-in help in a European ski chalet. The other applicants are all snooty types called Petronella and Henrietta looking, we can only assume, for some gap year fun after private school. Working class Kim is as out of place as her single-sylable name suggests but with typical storyline convenience the agency she applies through suddenly needs someone, immediately, and Kim is shipped off to an unspecified European snow town to begin her new life working for the rich and richer.
Cue scenes of out-of-place Kim being scorned by her fellow chalet girls, causing carnage on the slopes and exploding a bottle of vintage champagne she’s meant to be serving to a group of judgmental guests.
But of course this is a story of triumph over adversity, success of the underdog and redemption for past disappointments and Kim rallies both on and off the snowboard. Before long she’s cavorting in hot tubs, throwing corked threes and winning the heart of the son of her billionaire employer.
There are the usual act-two set backs that seem to steer Kim back towards failure and heartbreak but, well this is a feel good movie.
As storylines go the novice-to-superstar snowboarder is a little saccharine and the son-and-heir falls for the housemaid is utterly predictable but this is a British film, not a Hollywood number and there’s a slight edge to the saccharine – found in the no-holds-barred presentation of life as a chalet girl, naked hot tubs and all. The rather notable cast also helps lift this film well out of the made-for-TV genre and into big screen feature. Bill Nighy, Brooke Shields and Bill Bailey have all given the film their tick of approval by starring in it. And of course there’s Ed Westwick. Being famous for playing Gossip Girl’s Chuck Bass may not give Westwick a serious theatrical reputation but it sure makes him popular with teenage girls.
I should couch this review in a warning – I’m a closet fan of this type of movie – it’s exactly the ugg-boots-and-a-packet-of-jelly-snakes type of movie you need on lazy Sundays or after a mentally draining week. It demands nothing of you and gives back two hours of entertainment.
