DVD Review: Family Life (1971)

If you're looking for something light hearted after a hard week at work, you really don't want to slip Family Life into the DVD player. But if you're a fan of Ken Loach, this first-time DVD release is definitely worth seeking out.

It's an incredibly difficult film about mental illness and family breakdown, played out like a real-life documentary. In fact, if you caught this halfway through, you would be hard pushed to choose between fact and fiction. The only giveaway would be the main characters, including Sandy Ratcliff (long-time EastEnders character) and Bill Dean (best known as Harry Cross in Brookside in the 1980s).

Sandy Radcliff plays troubled teen Janice Baildon, struggling to hold down a job and struggling to come to terms with an abortion that was forced upon her. That's all compounded by the attitude of her parents - a strict disciplinarian father (Bill Dean) and a mother (Grace Cave) who wants to protect her daughter from the perceived evils of the modern world.

In their eyes, rules, regulations, tradition and a heavy-handed approach are all that's needed to keep their daughter safe from a world in moral decline. But it's just adding to the pressure on their daughter - and Janice gradually slides towards a mental breakdown. She initially finds hope in the forward-thinking methods of one psychiatrist, Dr Donaldson (Michael Riddall), but when his contract is terminated by the local hospital, she's left in the hands of a more traditional medical team - and more aggressive methods of curing her alleged mental problems, including electric shock and sedation. Worse still, she also goes back under the watchful eye of her family - the root of all her problems - prompting a further decline in Janice's condition, despite the attempts at intervention from boyfriend Tim (Malcolm Tierney), the one steady influence in her life.

It's a difficult film, made even more difficult by the quality of the acting on display, making this slice of reality very real indeed. Whether it's intended as criticism of the treatment of mental health in the UK at the time or a study of family breakdown and  the ever-increasing generation gap isn't clear. At the end of the day, it works on all three levels, intentional or not.

If you're a Ken Loach fan, this is certainly one for the collection. In fact, anyone who enjoys the grittier end of drama will get a lot from this movie. But if light comedies or Hollywood blockbusters are more your thing, you'll find this hard going.

Extras on the DVD:

None

More about the DVD at Amazon.co.uk