“I was a communist as a child,” Norris says. “I was the only member of the Bolton Young Communist League, and used to have committee meetings in my room and take it very seriously and even take minutes. I used to go on Lenin Weekends in Liverpool. We had a very charismatic dad, an idealist. But it was mum who held us all together.”

Norris’s parents, Brian and Lois, are happy to have their story retold and Brian even appears as an “extra” in one scene of the film.

For Lois Norris, however, the process of remembering her difficult time in East Germany has been upsetting. In the end, the 74-year-old is pleased something positive has come out of a period she still regards as “unremittingly awful.”

“I couldn’t wait to escape,” she says. “Even after 30 years, I feel disturbed and upset about reliving these memories. With hindsight, there are things I regret, like taking the children out of school. But it was a question of loyalty, commitment and a spirit of adventure. Most of my time was spent in dreary housekeeping, with the constant strain of finding something decent to eat from the unattractive shops. I couldn’t speak German so life became unbearable.”

Brian Norris, also 74, has many regrets too. “We did learn things though. It taught me things, but it was a difficult time.” He explains that the idea of teaching in East Germany was compelling at that point in history. “There were eager students and I was keen to see socialism from the inside.” Unknown to him, on his arrival a file was immediately opened at the Stasi secret police HQ in Berlin, marked “Norris, B.”

“Mrs. Rattcliffe’s Revolution” is subversive, veiled to the audience as a comedy as it slips the message that in fact no system is worth any more than the people invest in it at the time. Giving one up for another in search of happiness, the stereotypical dysfunctional family goes from burning their British passports to going to desperate measures to defect, bouncing around like a racketball from one overblown sense of idealism to the other.

What’s learned is not which faith or system is superior, but that the bad and the good of each contribute to their growth as individuals as well as a unit. Finally, as expected, emerges the end product of a family intact rising (literally) above the ruins of both.

The film ends with the frustratingly unanswered question “What now?” after losing their ideals of a perfect life and embrcing each other as humans...

And so does this review.

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