Keeping Mum (2005)

Keeping Mum is a 2005 black comedy film starring Rowan Atkinson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith and Patrick Swayze.

Plot: In the opening scene, as pregnant young Rosie Jones (Emilia Fox) rides on a train, her very large trunk starts leaking blood. When questioned by the police, she calmly reveals that the two dismembered bodies inside are of her unfaithful husband and his mistress. She is then sentenced by the judge (Roger Hammond) to a secure unit for the criminally insane for manslaughter.

Forty-three years later, in the village of Little Wallop, Walter Goodfellow, the vicar (Rowan Atkinson) is very busy writing the perfect sermon for a conference, having no idea about the problems in his house, which include the unfulfilled needs of his wife Gloria (Kristin Scott Thomas) who subsequently starts an affair with her golf instructor, Lance (Patrick Swayze); the rebellious nature of his daughter Holly (Tamsin Egerton) who constantly picks up new boyfriends; and son Petey (Toby Parkes) who is bullied by schoolmates. Then everything changes with the arrival of the new housekeeper Grace (Maggie Smith).

Walter and Gloria first meet her when they fail to fetch Petey from school and see him strolling with her. Gloria becomes very angry, thinking that Grace is trying to kidnap him and is appeased only when the latter identifies herself by showing an envelope with her name on it. Grace is installed into their lives and learns about some of the problems in the house — Clarence, the neighbour's (Mr. Brown's) nuisance-barking Jack Russell terrier, who disturbs Gloria's sleep; the boys who bully Petey; and the golf instructor with whom Gloria is having an affair. Walter does not know anything about any of this - the only problem he has is the toxic blue-green algae in the garden pond. Grace resolves to solve these problems in her own way. She first kills the dog, Clarence, and when his owner finds out that his dog has been killed, she kills him, too. She sabotages the bullies' bicycles, injuring one of them and thereby making Petey very happy. She catches the golf instructor outside the house one night, videotaping Holly undressing, and kills him with an iron. Around the same time, Walter leaves for an Ecclesiastical convention.