Splatter: on FILM

Finding Your Feet tells the story of Lady Sandra Abbott (Imelda Staunton), a posh housewife who discovers her husband is having an affair and is forced to seek refuge with her eccentric older sister, Biff (Celia Imrie). Biff takes Sandra under her colorful wing and introduces her to the close-knit group of pals that take dance classes at the local community center. At first, Sandra is stiff and inconsiderate. She struggles in Biff’s hoarder-style apartment in a dodgy part of London, where door locks remain broken and Biff routinely leaves her cell phone in the dryer.

But after a stern talking to from her older sis, a surprise night in jail, and a flirtation with the truly adorable Timothy Spall, Sandra begins to accept her fate as her sister’s helpless charge by making herself useful around the house and dancing every Thursday evening. This isn’t Sandra’s first time on the dance floor, however. She was a competitive ballroom dancer as a child, and Biff has home movies to prove it.

Of course, that was “a lifetime ago.”
When fellow community center dancer (Joanna Lumley) suggests an outdoor dance fundraiser in downtown London, everyone volunteers except Sandra, who is still working on sloughing off her hardened exterior. Give her a few minutes…

Time to suspend your disbelief: a video of the dance immediately goes viral and the troupe is flown to Rome to perform in variety show with stunningly high production values. If you weren’t already experiencing wanderlust from the beautiful sequences of Big Ben, you will be now.
The body count is high in this “comedy,” and deaths run the gamut: from a jovial side character conking out during a striptease to a more intense Stage 4 storyline—the filmmakers don’t spare us. Having made us fall in love with this ragtag group of seniors and then slowly ripping our hearts out, it would seem rude if it weren’t so downright charming.

This film will make you fall in love, strike a pose, and say goodbye. A big melting pot of joy and heartache. But isn’t that life?


(Now streaming on Hulu)

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Gwen Hughes is a seasoned writer and the Editor-in-Chief at Madison Park Living magazine. When she is not working, she enjoys reading short stories, quoting John Mulaney Netflix specials, and eating family-size boxes of Mott’s Fruit Snacks.