politburo joyan: A romantic comedy of environmental folly

Sara Reardon, reporter

(Image: CBS/Everett/Rex Features)

If you were an environmental research scientist, what would you do if you were handed an unlimited budget out of the blue? Using it to destroy an entire ecosystem, introduce an invasive species into a hostile environment and create a recreation park for one man would probably not top your list. But that?s the premise of the new romantic comedy Salmon Fishing in the Yemen which provides food for thought behind the shimmering romance.

Fred Jones (Ewan McGregor) is a fish scientist working for the UK government who receives a strange email from investment banker Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Emily Blunt). A Yemeni sheikh (Amr Waked) wants to commission Jones to install a river in the Yemen desert and introduce Scottish salmon into it - so the sheikh can fly fish in his backyard.

Jones immediately turns him down, saying simply that the desert is too hot and, oh, it has no water. But he?s too late: the prime minister?s overzealous press secretary (Kristin Scott Thomas), hungry for a Middle East story with a positive spin, spots the proposal and turns it into a flagship project for British science. With his job in jeopardy and with his marriage on its last legs, Jones takes a leap of faith and commits to the project and the pretty investment banker.

Despite the magnitude of the undertaking, there?s little science to be seen here. At the start, Jones gives Chetwode-Talbot a sarcastic markerboard lecture of the project?s many hurdles: engineering the dam to trap water from freshwater aquifers uncovered while drilling, oxygenating the water to the right temperature for North Atlantic salmon, transporting 10,000 salmon across three time zones in giant holding tanks, and convincing the farm-bred creatures to swim up river and spawn - all of which, he assures her, will result in a river full of belly-up fish.

The next we see, though, the two are walking along the side of a canyon in Yemen, hair blowing in the desert wind as they gape at the massive scale of the project magicked into existence behind them. Of course, it would tax the audience of a movie billed as a rom-com to tolerate an hour-long lecture on aquaculture. The satirical 2010 book by Paul Torday, on which the movie is based, leaves more room to expose the details. But when Jones, with his $50 million budget, hires the engineering team who built the notorious Three Gorges Dam in China to set up shop in the Yemen, one wonders how they pulled it off - or managed to get so far in spite of the same controversies.

(Image: CBS/Everett/Rex Features)

Even with the romantic focus, the movie delves into some real issues about the short-sightedness of environmental projects forced on communities, however beautiful and peaceful those projects may initially seem. Jones? boss at Defra, tasked with collecting 10,000 native salmon from Scotland?s rivers, suddenly finds his picture splashed across the cover of every fishing enthusiast magazine in the U.K., denouncing him as ?the salmon snatcher.?

The idea goes down no better in Yemen. It?s hardly a spoiler to say that the idea of putting a river in the desert doesn?t thrill the sheikh?s neighbours, who object to his hubris. After tragedy strikes, Jones has a brilliant thought: ?Next time, we?ll engage the local community, make it their project and not just ours!? he exclaims, eyes shining with long-overdue enlightenment.

Though the metaphors are a bit laboured at times, it?s a sweet, lightly funny movie overall, and it?s always nice to see a scientist in a non-evil role. A very human scientist too: money, love, and the sheikh?s seductive talk of faith are enough to convince Jones to put aside his better scientific judgement and take on a project that, even the sheikh later laments was intended ?to glorify God, but now I fear it was to glorify man.? It certainly doesn?t glorify the poor salmon.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is currently showing in cinemas throughout the US. It opens in the UK on 20 April.