Tortoise in Love (12A)

I watched this amateurish comedy of village manners in a cringe of mystified embarrassment, unable to discern who might have financed it or why its feeble tale of a tongue-tied gardener (Tom Mitchelson) falling for a Polish au pair (Alice Zawadski) should engage anyone with half a brain.

Then I discovered that it actually is an amateur undertaking, produced and financed by the villagers of Kingston Bagpuize, Oxfordshire, among whom writer-director Guy Browning counts himself.

So bravo to their endeavour, if not to the impossibly laboured jokes, the hopeless acting and the air of utter inconsequence.