As documentaries go, Tea with the Dames (which is also known as Nothing Like a Dame) is pretty tame.  It follows four acclaimed British actresses as they spend a weekend at one’s estate, talking about life and love and career.  Dames Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright and Maggie Smith spend time talking to one another and being interviewed on camera.  Interspersed are clips from their early movies and theatre appearances, and a few montages to pad the time.

Roger Michell’s film should have been ten years earlier, when these talented ladies still had full control of their faculties, and the energy to properly infuse their stories.  As it is, Joan Plowright (whose estate this is) is partly deaf and almost blind; Judi Dench also has sight issues.  They speak interestingly about various parts of their careers, and some of the clips from long-forgotten stage plays are fascinating in their own right.  I hadn’t realized how important Laurence Olivier had been to them (he was married to Plowright and worked with them all).  And moments of pithy humor punctuate the conversation at welcome points.

But Roger Michell fails to take charge of the project.  He doesn’t ask any of them about the differences of working on stage versus in front of the cameras, for instance, or how they dealt with sexism in an industry burgeoning with it.  None of the stories are particularly ribald, nor are they genuinely moving.  What are the big regrets they have, or their proudest accomplishments?  We’ll never know, because he didn’t ask, and they didn’t dish about those things.  What is there is like small talk at a party, which I found distressingly dull.

It’s always nice to see talent like this celebrated and feted, especially in an informal setting where artificiality and fawning over celebrity is thankfully absent.  But this is about as boring a project as could be fabricated from a weekend in the English countryside.  These dames deserve better, and they should have provided it, or prodded the recalcitrant director into greater effort.  ☆ ☆.  7 November 2018.