Here's a stylish, warm romantic drama which gets away to a flying start in that it's set in the leisurely champagne country of France. Pic is always a delight to the eye apart from its other qualities.
Here’s a stylish, warm romantic drama which gets away to a flying start in that it’s set in the leisurely champagne country of France. Pic is always a delight to the eye apart from its other qualities.
The screenplay, based on Rumer Godden’s novel, works up to a holding emotional pitch. Story concerns four English schoolchildren, the oldest (Susannah York) being just over 16. They are enroute to a holiday in France’s champagne-and-greengage country when their mother is taken ill and is whisked off to hospital.
Alone and dispirited they arrive at the hotel which is run by Danielle Darrieux and managed by Claude Nollier. The children get a frigid reception but Kenneth More, a debonair, charming, mysterious Englishman insists that they stay. He’s having an affair with Miss Darrieux and she cannot resist his whims. During the long summer the atmosphere thickens.
The early part of the film, when the relationship between More and the children is developing, is particularly charming and pleasantly staged. York progresses delightfully from the resentful, gawky schoolgirl to the young woman eager to live. She handles some tricky scenes (as when she gets drunk with champagne and when she is assaulted by an amorous scullery boy) with assurance.
More’s scenes with the moppets are great as are his rather more astringent skirmishes with Darrieux. She plays the jealous, fading mistress on rather too much of one note, but with keen insight. And there is a subtly drawn relationship of hinted lesbianism between her and Nollier.
The Greengage Summer
UK
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