Portrait of a Plucky Old Lady, a screen species that tends more often than not to be British, a subspecies that tends these days to be Judi Dench. She -- Dame Judi -- plays here, very playfully indeed, a well-bred widow from WWII-era London, who, with time and money on her hands, purchases and refurbishes the derelict Windmill Theatre in the West End, and, with the head-butting collaboration of a Jewish impresario (Bob Hoskins, in fine fettle), institutes the "radical idea" of nonstop music-hall performances: Revuedeville. When her competition catches up with that idea, she advances another step ahead, a step in the direction of Paris, a step toward their Moulin Rouge namesake: "Why don't we get rid of the clothes? Let's have naked girls!" But the only way around the censorial Lord Chamberlain (Christopher Guest, probably having more fun than his character ought to be having) is to compromise on a rule of no movement: so-called tableaux vivants, to preserve an air of Frenchness. The results, copiously illustrated, are chastely, charmingly, nostalgically, elegantly erotic, and the fastidious period reproduction extends even to the shapes and sizes of the boobs. (It extends as well to the moral code: the unmarried girl who gets herself pregnant promptly gets herself killed.) All in all, a well-crafted film from the erratic Stephen Frears, a film that fully accomplishes its aims, modest though those may be. (2005) — Duncan Shepherd