Pas de larmes pour Joy

One of the best of the 'kitchen-sinks'. Fantastic views of London and invaluable snippets of working class life of the 60's. Loach's eye seems to capture everything, yet makes no judgment - a taste of things to come. As with 'Kes', 'Riff-raff' and 'Sweet Sixteen', it serves as a cinematic social history of Britain. Carol White is completely convincing, you love her, fancy her, want to take care of her, but hold your head at her self-destructive decisions and still follow her in some vain hope. Well backed up by Terence Stamp, ( fresh off 'The collector', also catch 'The Hit' ) and a plethora of English faces ( all looking very young ). Pefectly set to Donovan's dulcet tones. Stamp sings 'Yellow is the color', in a lovely scene, ending with him saying, " Getting better, ain't I " ( song also used in 'The rules of Attraction' - I think ) Watch Carol Whites screen mum getting ready to 'go out and get a bloke', putting on her false eye-lashes to the sound of 'Rosie' on the radio - priceless. A treasure for anyone who was around at the time and a reminder of how good life is now in England. Incidentally Soderburgh used clips from 'Poor cow' in 'The Limey'.

Swinging London of myth, was for most at the time, a fantasy. It involved a small number of people, in a small area of the city, for a short time. But as many of those who were of this group, went on and maintained long careers in film, TV, Arts and literature/journalism, it's effect and scope was and has been much magnified.

Trust Ken Loach (who else?) to shine a light in the London of the mid/late 60's' for many people, was the reality. Not just the criminal element either.

Loach after all had form here, with his groundbreaking TV plays such a 'Up The Junction' and 'Cathy Come Home'. Showing the darker side of London that was then, still, an industrial city in parts.

Carol White, as lead Joy, had also been in those Loach films, she was a working class Julie Christie and carried off the role of this troubled young woman with aplomb.

White really was a fine actress, sadly like the roles which made her famous with Loach, the real woman was as troubled. Not due to poverty, a different kind of trouble, the numerous affairs, the decline in her career, to die from alcohol abuse at just 48 far from her London roots. It does change you way you view Poor Cow with this knowledge.

Terence Stamp as Dave is excellent - though such was his stardom by then he would turn up for filming in a Rolls Royce! The notorious John Blindon (surely the most stark example of Loach's use of 'real' people who often had the same lives as they acted on screen), struggles as an actor in his first role, though again, with the knowledge of the real Blindon this is less noticeable.

The Loach 60's standards of lots of sequences of real life, lots of cameo characters, loose plotting, are much in evidence.

This is not a film for everyone, if you think you'll see another classic British gangster film, you'll be disappointed. But this was a radical, daring, atmospheric film, more of historic interest than greatly entertaining, worth a look.

It is worth noting that The Limey (1999) is a follow up to Poor Cow. The writer of the later film has stated that the similarities between these two films is incidental. However, Steven Soderbergh (the director of The Limey) has said that he specifically intended for his movie to be a sequel to Poor Cow. If you liked Poor Cow you might also want to see The Limey.

Recently released on British DVD, this is a good movie (as long as you have an attention span and IQ of more than a fruit fly). Not as depressing as it could have been, this is kitchen-sink at its most dirty. Terrance Stamp is great in it, the music is sweet, Carol White is very believeable as the single mum tart who can't stop loving criminals.

My favourite scene is where Carol and her friend who works in the pub with her (the one with the enormous beehive hairdo which comes down over one eye) sit outisde and gossip about all the men who walk past.

The only thing that marred this was the shakey acting of Carol's first husband, but if you can get past that, you're OK. And Donovan provides some of the most languid, mellow, bittersweet lyrics to come out of the 60s.

Beginning with an eye-watering sequence depicting the birth of Carol White's baby boy. Thanks to director 'Kenneth' (as he was then billed) Loach's restless camerawork (punctuated by Godardian captions) the sixties here sways rather than swings in a film that manages to encompass nearly a century of British film history through the presence in the same picture of both Wally Patch and Malcolm MacDowall (not to mention future sitcom stars Kate Williams and Anna Karen); and it's apt that over thirty years later scenes from this of the young and saturnine Terence Stamp strumming his guitar were employed as flashbacks in 'The Limey' (1999).

Although it didn't seem like it at the time, we're now nearly twice as far from the sixties as the sixties were from the thirties. Life at the bottom of the heap remains as bleak in the twenty-first century as ever, and continues (doubtless to no one's regret more than Loach himself) to provide him with plenty of material. In his eighties he doesn't seem able to retire just yet.