The tail end of the 60s and the beginning of the 70s was a fascinating period in British cinema. The draconian censorship was starting to loosen up a little. British filmmakers were, very nervously, exploring the possibilities of making honest grown-up movies about sexual subjects.
Home Before Midnight came out in 1979 but it is a late entry in this intriguing cycle of British films. It was controversial at the time. Today it would have critics heading for the fainting couch.
Mike Beresford (James Aubrey) is the lyricist for a rock band. He’s 28. Despite his profession he’s a pretty ordinary pretty decent sort of guy. He picks up a pretty hitchhiker. Her name is Ginny (Alison Elliott). She tells him studying fashion design. They have sex but from the start it’s obvious that their attraction goes beyond the sexual. They fall head over heels in love very quickly.
Their relationship blossoms.
Then Mike finds Ginny’s bracelet. It was a birthday present. It has her birth date on it. She’s 14.
Up to this point Mike has had not the slightest reason even to think about her age. She looks maybe 19. She behaves like a girl of that age. She’s quite sophisticated and quite poised. She is obviously sexually very experienced. It worth pointing out that Alison Elliott, who plays Ginny, was indeed 19 at the time. And she looks 21 at least.
Of course it’s all going to become very messy. The police become involved. Mike is charged with things he did do and a whole bunch of things he didn’t do. There are betrayals.
It’s important to note the class angle. Mike is working class. Ginny is very middle-class. Her school is concerned only with its own reputation. Ginny’s father is horrified at the threat to the family’s middle-class respectability. He is incapable of understanding that Ginny has in fact been very sexually active for quite some time. He prefers to think that some awful working-class yob has corrupted his pure innocent little girl.
Clearly Walker had a few things to say in this film. The law has nothing to do with justice. The law is a blunt instrument. Even when wielded with good intentions it crushes people, and the police and the courts do not have good intentions.
Love does not conquer all. If there’s a conflict between love and the desire for social approval then love goes out the window. Mike’s problem is that he is the babe in the woods. He is amazed when he feels the metaphorical knife plunged into his back.
It’s interesting that some reviews criticise this movie for mixing a serious approach to a sensitive subject with exploitation content. I think this is a very wrong-headed attitude but it is alas very common - the assumption that sexual content is automatically exploitation content. I think that’s nonsense.
And it’s certainly nonsense in the case of this film. There’s nudity and there are some steamy sex scenes. They’re absolutely necessary. We have to understand that this is more than a sexual relationship, but it is a sexual relationship. We also need to understand that this is a case of very strong mutual sexual attraction. Ginny is not being pressured into anything. She is hot for Mike and she enjoys the sex very much. You might not approve of their relationship but if you’re going to get anything out of the movie you do need to understand the nature of the relationship. And the fact Ginny is not merely willing but eager to have sex becomes crucially important in plot terms.
And Walker approaches the sex scenes in a very sensitive way. They’re passionate but they’re not the least bit crass.
Perhaps the thing that will shock modern viewers the most is the movie’s assumption that the line between victim and villain is not clear-cut.
James Aubrey is very good as Mike. He plays him like a deer caught in the headlights and it works. Alison Elliott handles Ginny’s teenage girl wild unpredictability well. As for the age thing, whether she was a good casting choice is harder to say. She is totally unconvincing as a 14-year-old but in some ways that makes her the right choice since so much hinges on the fact that Mike does not even suspect Ginny’s real age. An actress who looked younger would have made this a completely different movie.
This is an intelligent provocative movie and it’s highly recommended.
I also very highly recommend Pete Walker’s earlier Cool It, Carol! (1970) which also deals intelligently with sex.
Other British movies of around this time that also try to deal intelligently with sex are All the Right Noises (1970), Baby Love (1969) and especially the superb I Start Counting (1969).
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