Set in a conservative English coastal town in 1959, The Bookshop, named after Penelope Fitzgerald’s 1978 novel of the same name, is a tedious and tight-lipped adaptation from the British Isles.

We meet our literary heroine, wistful widow Florence Green (the ordinarily wonderful Emily Mortimer), as she sits among the sand dunes and gazes out to sea.

It’s an expression that plagues Florence throughout the rest of the film.

The wind rustles through her hair and billows through her clothes, and those big, sad eyes stay fixed on the horizon.

Director Isabel Coixet amps up the sentimentality with a cloying, heavy-handed musical score.

Clunky writing, stunted dialogue and awkward staging combine to make things worse.

Despite slow pacing that is ripe for character development, we never really get to know Florence that well.

What we do learn about her makes it hard to care very much.

Although she appears to be a go-getter, she remains as mysterious by the end of the film as at the start.

We do admire Florence for her pluckiness, however.

Despite being warned off by the wealthy bully Violet Gamart (a delicious Patricia Clarkson) and her spineless fop, Milo North (James North), Florence resolves to open her bookshop.

With a stiff upper lip, she politely chips away at the status quo.

She battles the establishment, cold and damp, the bank, the naysayers and even the local council when she converts an abandoned building into her bookshop.

Her ambitions bring her into direct conflict with the powerful Mrs Gamart, who would rather the derelict house become an arts hub.

Florence’s bookshop causes a stir in the stuffy town and is an immediate success.

It also kicks-off her friendship with a wealthy, mostly house-bound hermit, Edmund Brundish (Bill Nighy).

Mr Brundish is awkward, repressed and typically English.

The furniture in his palatial home is draped in white sheets and he narrates his letters to Florence from the lonely largess of his dining table.

New books are delivered to him by a local child.

Mr Brundish slowly emerges from his solitude after feverishly reading Florence’s latest arrivals: Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and the then-scandalous Lolita by Nabokov.

He becomes a powerful ally for Florence in her battle for the town’s heart and soul.

Central to the story is Florence’s mentorship of a young girl named Christine (Honor Kneafsey), who works in the shop and becomes a steadfast ally.

Christine is underestimated by almost all of the adults around her yet plays a pivotal role in the story’s conclusion.

What should have been a delicious ending fell flat, I think through a failure of character development.

The Bookshop is a pretty film and much attention has been invested in capturing the parochialism of village life in the fictional town of Hardsborough in Suffolk.

The costumes are beautiful – 1950s style sundresses, charming suits and working clothes – and the picturesque village is brought to life by Portaferry, a small town in County Down in Northern Island.

The townsfolk are rich as characters, but the film fails to capture their essence.