Picknick um Mitternacht

Tamahine (Nancy Kwan) is a teenager who has spent her entire life living in Polynesia. Then, out of the blue, she is sent to live with a relative in England...a culture as unlike the British one as you can find! Oddly, no one ever thinks about trying to educate and acclamate her to the English customs and instead they deny her normal sexual drives and attempt to force her to be like a lady...without ever teaching her was being a lady means. This really, really annoyed me because it goes by a very dim assumption--that these smart, educated people in England are in fact total morons. So, instead of realism, the story plays it all for laughs as again and again, Tamahine does things which upset her tightly wound guardian, the headmaster of a boys school! My feeling is that the film had a decent idea for a story but instead of playing it out intelligently, it went for cheap laughs and cliches. It's a shame, as Nancy Kwan is excellent and radiant...and deserved better.

Nancy Kwan lights the screen up with an engaging portrayal of a Polynesian girl, daughter of a British civil servant who as they say back in the United Kingdom, went native. You should hear Kwan tell it how he was a one man population explosion, but she's the only one whose mother he married.

Anyway with both parents dead Kwan is now in the custody of a cousin of her father, Dennis Price who is the very proper schoolmaster of a prep school whose graduates will be running the Empire or what's left of it. His son John Fraser also goes to this school and both have their libidos boiling over with Kwan around.

This is Nancy Kwan's show and the rest are all in support of her. The plot is skimpy and the supporting characters are not particularly fleshed out in the script.

But for Kwan fans the film is a must.

Nancy Kwan is exquisite and I would watch her in anything, but unfortunately everything draped around her in this film is a bore. Without really delving in to her character as a person, the film quickly transports her from Polynesia to London via Paris early on, the set up being an excuse to show off a beautiful young woman and the culture clash with the boys at a boarding school. "She loved the whole student body ... and they sure loved hers!!" as the movie poster blares.

Kwan's character, Tamahine, is childlike in her innocence, but talks bluntly about sex and seems to have a one-track mind for pleasure. She uses the word "love" for "sex," e.g. "At what age is permitted love?" and "On my island, we have schools for loving." She talks about her father having many lovers, men needing women, and says "I am thinking, there is only one thing that will make a boy into a man. A woman." She wants to see the sex education film shown the young boys, and strips off her clothes without being asked for an artist ("It's only my body!"). She also tosses flowers down to boys from a balcony in her underwear, and later climbs a phallic tower after taking off her skirt. I loved that Kwan got a role in a sex farce in 1963 when representation was lacking, so while silly and exploitive, these were easily the best parts of the film.

Unfortunately, the stereotypes were hard to overlook and diminished my enjoyment. Tamahine is shown to come from a race of simple people, uninterested in anything other than pleasure. She also discusses her family's cannibalistic feasts back home, so we get the idea they're savages. Almost all her dialogue is delivered wide-eyed, in broken English. I was still captivated by her, but just wish the script was a little better, even considering the genre. When Kwan isn't on the screen, we get subplots like the headmaster's daughter carrying on with a teacher that aren't in the least interesting. If you're a Nancy Kwan fan as I am, watch it but be prepared to cringe; if you're not, skip it.

The first reviewer has clearly confused John Fraser and Dennis Price,as the later plays the headmaster. The films premise is totally unoriginal. Even allowing for that the film is unfunny,and overlong at 92 minutes.

Nancy Kwan stars as the titular character in Tamahine, a tongue-in-cheek comedy about stuffy British culture. She plays a Polynesian with a lovely, friendly personality and no embarrassment about her beauty or her body. When she's sent to stay with a cousin, Dennis Price, in England, he makes every attempt to stifle her personality and cover up her body. He's the head of a boys' school, and when she stands at her window, clad in only her underwear, and tosses flowers to the students, he nearly has a meltdown.

John Fraser (no doubt trying to live down the stigma of The Trials of Oscar Wilde) plays Nancy's love interest, but because of the massive culture clash, everyone tries to keep them apart. It just isn't cricket to have a stuffy British pupil, with every opportunity at his fingertips, to throw his principles away for an island girl. But what an island girl! Nancy is just adorable in this movie, as she is in all her early '60s flicks at the height of her career. She floats around the campus, holding her shoes in her hand, letting her hair blow in the breeze, charming everyone who sees her. But with her broken English and jokes about her lack of comprehension, I'm afraid many will feel the film doesn't stand the test of time. I was able to take the comedy for what it was, and just appreciate Nancy getting a leading role and looking too cute for words.

Try it out if you're a fan of hers, or if you like to make fun of English highbrow morals. There's also a very cute twist in the end that will put a smile on your face.