Inspired by the real history of Bexhill-on-Sea’s Victoria-Augusta-College, a 1930s finishing school for the daughters of the Nazi elite, “Six Minutes to Midnight,” helmed by Andy Goddard, wants to be a Hitchcockian thriller, but merely manages a familiar pastiche peopled with stock characters that should divert less-discriminating viewers.
The clunky plot, set circa August 1939, centers on an undercover British agent who infiltrates the school disguised as a new teacher.
With the U.K.
and Germany on the brink of war, his assignment is to discover if Deutschland plans on repatriating their young flowers of maidenhood and whether said Mädchen might serve as captive pawns in Britain’s diplomatic chess game.After his predecessor mysteriously disappears, Thomas Miller becomes the school’s English master.
He’s disdainfully welcomed by the school’s headmistress Miss Rocholl (a subdued Judi Dench) as a “journeyman” teacher.
In a telling indicator of the lower-budget nature of this project,
Read full article