This skillfully drawn comedy of manners, set in a Welsh village in 1924, has a whimsical start. Wilfred, a local undertaker, confusedly proposes to the daughter of the town doctor in a moment of awkwardness. By the time he realizes his mistake and tries to retract, Grace has bound him unalterably by telling her father that she is pregnant, and falsely implying that the child is his, just as Wilfred is falling in love with another woman. The lightness of the premise belies the thoughtfulness and sobriety of the ending, in which Wilfred and Grace test the boundaries of individual desire against the family and social duties of the time.
