DVD Review: A Touch Of Love (1969)
Optimum's new 60s Classics range is mainly just a repackaging job for some gems of the period, but one title is hitting DVD for the first time - A Touch Of Love.
It's a strange movie, walking a fine line between social realism and swinging London, without ever really getting gritty or indeed swinging. The action (if you can call it that) centres around Rosamund Stacey (Sandy Dennis - looking uncannily like a young Kylie Minogue), a young 'bookish' girl in London society, who spends her days studying for a doctorate in the British Museum and her nights avoiding the sexual attention of the men in her life. But one day, all that changes.
Through a friend, she is introduced to rising TV newsreader/announcer George Matthews (Ian McKellen) and after a further chance meeting and a tumble on the sofa, she finds herself pregnant from her first sexual encounter. A failed attempt at self-abortion just re-inforces Rosamund's resolve to have the child - leaving her on a solitary and at times dismal path through pregnancy and into motherhood, aided only by close friend Lydia (Eleanor Bron). Will she get through it? Will her child? And will she let Matthews know that he is actually the father?
As I said earlier, it's a strange movie, trying hard to be gritty, but with the unmarried mother being of an affluent background (complete with a stylish flat and we presume, some kind of allowance, courtesy of her overseas parents), it's hard to really find sympathy. Yes, she's treated badly by the system (still looking down on births out of wedlock at the time), but this is certainly no 'Cathy Come Home'.
Yet it is very watchable. Based on a Margaret Drabble novel and adapted for the screen by the writer herself, it's a very involving movie, with great dialogue and character interaction, some excellent performances (particularly from Dennis and McKellen). But on the downside, that also makes for a very slow movie, the kind of film you need to be in the mood for and a film that really needs your full attention. It's certainly not background viewing.
But it is a great period piece, interesting for capturing the attitudes of the day and for fans of the era, worth a look for the scenery (particularly around the Post Office Tower) and fashion of the period too. Whether this is for you really comes down to personal taste - if you don't mind a serious drama, you'll probably take to this. If you fancy something a little lighter from the era...well, there's always Smashing Time. Either way, certainly a worthwhile addition to the DVD racks.
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