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There are few more terrifying sights than Chiwetel Ejiofor in a dress, but the Dirty Pretty Things actor is still the best thing in this Priscilla-style culture clash set in shoe city, Northampton. Produced by the Calendar Girls team, it’s the calculatedly heartwarming tale of a struggling shoe manufacturer (Aussie Joel Edgerton) teaming up with a Soho drag queen to corner the market in thigh-length fetish boots for men.
It sounds like a load of old cobblers and indeed there are times where director Julian Jarrold loses his footing completely: between Ejiofor’s anguish over his sexuality and Edgerton’s fear of failing his dead dad it’s a remarkably feel-bad comedy. Luckily things rally in time for a camp finale on the catwalk in Milan, though even here writers Geoff Deane and Tim Firth are keener on plucking the heartstrings than tickling the funny bone.
