All the Right Noises

This is a late 60's/early 70's example of British "kitchen-sink realism" that began in the late 50's with films like "Saturday Night, Sunday Morning" and really continues up into the present day with the films of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. Strangely, the late 60's/early 70's Swinging London era was an especially fertile period for these films, even though many of them--"Up the Junction", "Deep End", "I Start Counting"--were so provincial and working-class British, you'd never guess that anything extraordinary was happening in London at the time.

For whatever reason (perhaps there was a law?) every appealing young Brit actress of that era seemed to have to make at least one movie where she has a romance with a man old enough to be her father. Judy Geeson got stuck with Rod Steiger in "Three Into Two won't Go" and her younger sister Sally Geeson REALLY got stuck with Norman Wisdom (the UK's answer to Jerry Lewis) in "What's Good for the Goose". Susan George got romantically paired with the somewhat older Michael York in "The Strange Affair" and the much older Charles Bronson in "Twinky". Haley Mills avoided this IN MOVIES, but in real-life married her much older director Roy Boulting. And art actually imitated life for Jane Birkin as she went to France to have an on-screen AND off-screen romance with middle-aged French singer Serg Gainsbourg in "Slogan". This movie was apparently the May-December quota film for Olivia Hussey, the teenage star of Zeffereli's "Romeo and Juliet". It's more believable than most because she's paired with the 30-ish Tom Bell, who's conceivably still youthful and handsome enough to attract the interest of a teenager. And Hussey's character is a very precocious fifteen-going-on-sixteen and from an upper social class. She's an aspiring actress and he's a married theatrical electrician with two kids and an elderly gambling-addict father.

This is one of the most realistic of the British realist films perhaps because nothing really melodramatic ever happens. Unfortunately, that's also makes it rather boring, aside from the excellent performances by leads Hussey and Bell, and to a lesser Judy Carnes as the Bell character's unsuspecting(?)wife. I suppose that might also make it MORE of a male fantasy in that it doesn't necessarily end in divorce, scandal, and a lengthy jail sentence, but there actually isn't much of a sexual element to this either as most of the physical romance occurs off screen. It's not a bad film by any means, but it's one of those films that just kind of is what it is.

For some reason the theme of older man and younger girl seems a perennially popular one in French cinema and is usually done - film and relationship - with charm and some believability. The stories of Colette an influence but not entire explanation. In Gigi, the film based on a Colette story, young Leslie Caron is an engaging ingenue. Her ultimate fate is glossed over however her love interest is the older but attractive and ultimate French charmer, Louis Jourdan, someone who could probably win over any girl's mother in his project. UK films on this topic however tends towards a peculiar mixture of moralising and prurience - exploitation under the guise of exploring social issues.

Here the film entirely lacks charm (other than Olivia Hussey's innate kind) or believablility. Tom Bell, as ever, plays a bluff manly man's man, but is neither charmer nor seducer. Perhaps his appearance was fashionable at the time but the over-long all-round facial hair gives him a slightly furtive appearance - a sort of hair-hoody, slightly suggestive of dirty-mac schoolyard-loiterer. His performance seems low key - as if hoping that few people will notice he's in the cast. Olivia Hussey, having just charmed the world with her youngest sweetest prettiest of Juliets, is an odd choice here - more a dirty mac fantasy than anything remotely believable. In real life a girl of such extraordinary prettiness would have experienced the interest and (usually) tiresome attentions of older men, would thus have well known her attractiveness and chosen someone special, whatever their age, of equal or greater attractiveness either of looks, style, manner, education, sophistication or simply very rich - not an ordinary middle-aged geezer. Putting aside the improbability, the story-line itself is so-so. The casting of Olivia Hussey makes the film ridiculous.

"Is 15 1/2 too young for a girl?" That didn't really relect this honest story about a married man having an affair with a teenage girl. It wasn't just about sex and they certainly make a good looking couple. They dont look out of place in their acting world and social circle despite the age gap. Its great to see a young olivia hussey in something contempory and totally different to romeo and juliet. Which is all that i had seen her in before i watched this. What a talent she was to be leading films like this and R&J at such a young age.

Far from the saucy romp suggested by the title, it's actually a very subdued triangle drama against a well drawn theatrical backdrop. Seen over fifty years later it's even more poignant than it doubtless seemed at the time since Tom Bell and Judy Carne are both now long dead and Olivia Hussey seventy-one years old.

A very small film that likely has seem only a be small number of people and a tiny theatrical release. Except for the young fifteen your old Olivia Hussey who had had the most amazing experience in Italy with Zeffirelli and Romeo and Juliet that made her famous across the world. She was like an innocent young child except she was older than her years, smoking a cigarette on TV and falling into a romance with Tom Bell in the film. His is fine, as is Judy Carne as his wife and the story is likeable enough though it his to see there is not anything that earth crashing.