It’s been a while since marijuana was the major topic of a feature film, but who says it’s gone the way of the waterbed and the Grateful Dead? In Saving Grace, marijuana is the good guy in the film. This is a fun film and one that could only be made by an independent filmmaker. A crowd pleaser here at the Sundance Film Festival, Fine Line secured the North American rights this week for $3.5 million.

In this wry comedy, Grace Trevethan (Brenda Blethyn) finds herself widowed, hopelessly in debt, and with no financial understanding. In fact, the only talent she appears to have is that of a master gardener. As her creditors cart her possessions away, Grace is desperate for a means to keep her house. Her Scottish handy man, Matthew (Craig Ferguson) gives her the solution - growing hemp. With Grace’s master gardening skills, he guarantees her a large profit. Grace, heretofore a pillar of the upper crust of Brit society, plunges into this new enterprise with gusto, pausing long enough to sample the product of her labours. The characters of Grace and Matthew are so appealing, that the audience finds itself rooting for crime to, for Grace to succeed in pulling off a major drug deal.

Saving Grace is a tour de force for Brenda Blethyn, whose Grace is a garden-club kind of woman thrust into a world of nefarious drug lords. Her foray into this world makes for a very humourous clash of cultures, and when the garden club discovers her new plants, the results are gut-splitting hilarious.

Director Nigel Cole takes a screenplay by Ferguson and Mark Crowdy and makes the implausible plausible. It's hard to imagine a studio backing a project in which the audience would want Grace to keep her house by selling drugs. In tone and spirit, Saving Grace bears some resemblance to The Full Monty. In both films, Brits compromise their values in order to survive, and we see the pathos and humor in their efforts.