Mike Beresford, a handsome young songwriter, picks up an attractive brunette hitchhiker named Ginny who tells him that she is studying fashion design at art college. Before long romance blossoms between the two and they begin a relationship. That might sound like the beginning of a romantic comedy, but in fact "Home Before Midnight" is not a comedy of any sort.
It soon becomes apparent that Ginny was lying when she said that she was at art college. In reality she is still a schoolgirl and only 14 years old. Mike is initially horrified when he discovers the truth, but Ginny persuades him that she is in love with him and their relationship continues. When her parents find out, however, they inform the police, and Mike finds himself on trial charged with having sex with a minor. (Not, as some have written, "statutory rape"- there is no such offence under British law. Consensual sex with a minor is an offence, but a less serious one than rape unless the minor is aged under thirteen).
What follows is narrated in a semi-documentary style. Although this was a feature film- it was probably too sexually explicit to have been shown on British television in 1979- it reminded me of a "Play for Today" or other similar television dramas of the period, which often focused upon some topical social issue. It rather gives the lie to the currently fashionable idea that under-age sex was taken less seriously during the seventies and eighties than it would be today. There may have been a vocal minority calling for the lowering of the age of consent, especially the so-called Paedophile Information Exchange, but the great majority of the population were opposed to the idea and held the PIE and its activities in contempt. We see this attitude reflected in the film; as soon as people know what offence Mike has been charged with, his friends and even his own parents turn against him.
The film does, however, also highlight one of the drawbacks of the under-age sex laws. The laws exist in order to protect young people, yet they can often only be enforced by persuading, or even compelling, the young person to give evidence against someone they once loved- perhaps still do love- something which much be psychologically very damaging to them. This happens to Ginny in the film. She is at first unwilling to give evidence against Mike, but is forced to do so by pressure from her parents, her school and the authorities, with the threat that she will be taken into "care" if she does not.
Indeed, Ginny is forced to testify not only that she had sex with Mike (which is perfectly true) but also that she was forced to do so against her will (which is not), meaning that he can be charged with the more serious offence of rape. Both her headmistress and her parents feel that there will be less scandal and less reputational damage if it can be shown that she was not a willing participant.
Ginny's relationship with her parents is an odd one. At first they seem ultra-liberal to the point of reckless folly, allowing their fourteen-year-old daughter to go hitchhiking accompanied only by a classmate and to spend the weekend in the company of a man twice her age and complacently accepting her assurances that her relationship with Mike is non-sexual. Her father Harry comes across as particularly creepy, slapping his daughter on the bottom and calling her "sexy". As soon as they discover the truth, however, they switch virtually in an instant from ultra-liberal to ultra-protective.
"Home Before Midnight" is not a great film, and there are no acting performances that stand out. Alison Elliott who plays Ginny was making, at the age of twenty, the last of her three appearances in a feature film. Apart from Richard Todd, in his heyday a star of the British cinema, as Mike's lawyer, the only cast members I had previously heard of were Debbie Linden (better known as a glamour model) and Chris Jagger, brother of the more famous Mick. Yet it manages to ask some pertinent questions about the law and sexuality in seventies Britain. 6/10.
