A Touch of Love

A TOUCH OF LOVE is a film adaptation of a famous feminist novel of the 1960s by Margaret Drabble entitled THE MILLSTONE. It's a work of social realism that looks at the plight of a young girl who finds herself pregnant with no father in sight, and the trials and tribulations she faces over what do with the unborn baby. A film which rides the trend for gritty kitchen sink dramas without ever sugar coating the story. What's surprising is that this was put out by the Amicus film studio, who were best known as Hammer's main British rival and who put out horror anthology after horror anthology during the era. A TOUCH OF LOVE is completely atypical for them, and yet as a film it retains a certain quality that gives it the edge over rival fare.

American actress Sandy Dennis is an excellent choice for the lead role and totally convinces as the young and naive British girl. Compare her performance with, say, Renee Zellweger in BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY. I know the films are from two entirely different genres, but Zellweger's acting is full of exaggerated mannerisms and a put-on persona, where Dennis is all real, all out in the open, and thoroughly sympathetic as a result. Ian McKellen has a warm role as her friend and the supporting cast is generally fine. Watching as a viewer in the 21st century, I was occasionally flabbergasted at the depiction of the sexist and inhumane attitude of NHS workers during the era; a young Penelope Keith is one of the nurses.

After seeing Sandy Dennis in all her somewhat-quirky roles ( I even saw her hit '60,s play "Any Wednesday", before she got into films), it was almost a revelation: how beautiful and fine her performance. Also, interesting as time warp: 60's situation and attitude, also all the other fine performers when they were young( Bron, Standing, McKellen )

The crying baby with the bright red face Sandy Dennis has thrust into her hands in a hospital waiting room would now be in her fifties (assuming it was a girl).

For someone who regards a film made in 1970 as recent, it's sobering to realise that over half a century now separates us from this attempt by sixties schlockmeisters Max J. Rosenberg & Milton Subotsky to go legit by filming Margaret Drabble's 1964 novel 'The Millstone' in a fashion reminiscent of 'The L-Shaped Room'. More decades now separate us from this film than from this film and the silent era; a time when telephones had rotary dials, the Post Office Tower featured prominently in the background during the street scenes so we knew it was London, Sandy Dennis was a bankable Hollywood star, and Penelope Keith as a nurse and Ian McKellan in his film debut look young and fresh-faced (the latter playing a gay man long before he came out in reality. "I keep it secret not because it's wicked but because it's so dull!").

And the stylistic tic indulged in by first-time big screen director Warris Hussein is pans and zooms rather than pans and steadicam, as it would be today.

Gentle film based on the Margaret Drabble novel of several years earlier, entitled, The Millstone.

Ros is an academic virgin doing her thesis at some unnamed university. One night she makes love to a campy television presenter played by Ian McKellen and falls pregnant. After much thought, she decides to keep the baby.

Luckily her rather cold parents have left London for Africa, so she has the run of their large mansion flat off Baker Street and she invites her friend, played by Eleanor Bron, to move in. This adds some life to the proceedings. Bron even rents a TV to bring some light to their gloomy flat, it also gives Ros a chance to catch brief glimpses of the father of her child, who she temporarily becomes mildly obsessed with.

The film is really about a young woman who grapples with the problems of having a child out of wedlock at a time when this was socially difficult.

It's sensitively made. Sometimes quite lifeless. There are some very nice shots of London, mostly around Marylebone. It's quite atmospheric and is the sort of gentle film that in the 70s would have been a rather good one-off TV play. The sort that are sadly no longer made. Middle Class, well spoken, Londoners are now forbidden territory for TV or cinematic dramas in 'Classless Britain'.

Made in 1969, but don't expect 'Swinging London'. Ros, played, rather well by Sandy Dennis, who affects a very good English accent, is what back then would have been considered a 'square'. No Donovan singles in Ros's record collection or Saturday afternoons along the King's Road. More a case of violin recitals at The Wigmore Hall and matronly outfits from Fenwick's.

The film is now available on an excellent quality DVD.

It's well made, well shot, well acted, somewhat lifeless at times, but what's good about it adds up to make this into a film well worth watching.

Not sure I find Sandy Dennis very credible, it's a mannered performance, at times impassive and disengaged, at times the opposite - for no discernible reason other than perhaps to maintain her familiar unfathomable screen personna.

Clearly written by a woman, judged by the savage portrayal of the sadistic hospital matron who needlessly blocks the young mother from even glimpsing her recovering infant under the pretence of efficiency and rules, in contrast to the kind (male) consultant who is only too happy to allow this.

Ian McKellan plays a pleasant young man who one would assume seduces the Dennis character only that she seems neither stirred nor shaken by his advances. Nevertheless clearly we gather from her change of costume into something more comfortable and it being morning, that intimacy has taken place. Somehow this significant event has, while changing her state irrevocably, left her manner as neutral and unchanged as if it never happened. And, oddly, the film ended suddenly leaving me feeling exactly the same - as if nothing of interest or significance had happened.