...so I dearly related to this part of the story. People get connected by all sort of unexpected things, so why not by a good book? Marguerite Yourcenar's " Denier du reve" thread of narration follows the fate of a ...dime handed by various characters that get connected to each other in this way.
On the other hand, I also connected to the story of the club itself which is not so singular as it may looks: harsh times have the virtue of bringing people together and, growing up in the Romania's comunist era, I have lived among the members of a group like this, only they were rather tied one to the others through...music. Gatherings were organized ( or spontaneous) semi-clandestine to listen to classical music which was also a pretext to spread news from the free world and listen to free radio channels from the West. There was also a custom to bring somethig to eat and in those times when food was scarce and precious we have not been far from eating something as bad as a potato peel pie! But most of all the air was vibrating of this joy of togetherness and of full support between us. A refuge from the adversities which made those long decenies more endurable. So I fully recognize this experience and I can testify it's authenticity!
Back to the movie, the chemistry between the characters is obvious, you can feel the intensity of their emotions far from the screen difficultly fading away after the end. The characters are not fully developped though but as I haven't read the book so I can't say if it's the plot or the book. From this perspective I kept doubting the veridicity of the relation between a writer and a farmer - there can be some exceptions, of course, but the "usual" writer and the "usual" famer live in such different worlds that one can seriously doubt that a deep connection is to be established between the two. Or as far as I'm concerned, a film is art but has to stay true to human nature, otherwise is just someone's fantasy, which I am not interested in.