In 1950s Yorkshire, Ellen, mother of 10 year-old Victor, is stifled in a loveless marriage to her factory worker husband. In an otherwise dull life, Victor's teacher, Kathy is a source of light and colour. Soon, Ellen realises that her feelings for Kathy go deeper than just friendship.
Victor is a bright and gifted lad whose artistic ability brings him to the attention of his teacher, Miss Thomson. Her encouragement and her part in having his work included in a local art exhibition give her and Victor's mother, Ellen, common cause and, as a result, they spend a good deal of time together.
While Ellen is uneducated, she is intelligent and articulate and expresses how much she would like to have seen more of life; to have learned more. Miss Thomson - Kathy - listens and empathises with her new friend. As a result Ellen and Kathy, with Victor in tow, start to see each other socially.
Meanwhile, Ellen's husband, Geoff, who is a dutiful but unloving husband, and who struggles to find any way in which to relate to his son or appreciate his son's gifts, dislikes Ellen's new friendship, perhaps sensing that Kathy is more in a position to repond to Ellen's wider emotional and intellectual vistas.
As Ellen and Kathy's friendship deepens it becomes noticeable that there is connection building between them.
Summer comes, and one night while Ellen is away on holiday with Geoff and Victor, she realises, during a thunderstorm, that Kathy gives her things that Geoff never could, and with it she realises just how deep her feelings for her now lie. The realisation is like being struck by the lightning flashing outside.
Between Two Women is something of a family affair with Victor being played by Edward Woodcock, son of writer/director/producer Stephen and executive producer, Julie. Andrew Dunn, a capable actor, is not given the opportunity to bring more to a role that we have seen all too many times before - the gruff, emotionally repressed, working-class Northern male. Andrina Carroll, is charming as Kathy, but plays her with a touch of timidity that is somewhat at odds with her apparent sophistication and wide-ranging intellect. Barbara Marten, however, makes up for the other characters' deficits by portraying Ellen as a woman who is warm and loving, and whose eyes search for some far distant horizon that she is never likely to see; all the while with a hint of sadness that wins our sympathies.
With a running time of just 92 minutes, Between Two Women is not without its longueurs. At times the characters seem to be shuffled about without any real sense of purpose or meaning: a scene where Victor plays with a friend near a railway line hints at the possibility of great danger, but it plays out without incident. Perhaps the film's origins on commercial TV account for its peculiar dramatic rhythms. Elsewhere, a strangely inappropriate synthesiser soundtrack by Michael Hammer - sounding like something you might find playing in the background in a shop that stocks healing crystals - intrudes and does nothing to support the period feel of the film.
Woodcock's film seeks to explore the emergence of 'forbidden' love and does so without titillation, dwelling instead on emotional intimacy. But even there it never fully comes to grips it's subject, offering us no release through professions of love or even a kiss. Throughout, trains are used, somewhat heavy-handedly, as a metaphor for escape and freedom, not least when Ellen and her parents see off Ellen's sister and her husband as they embark on their journey to a new life in Australia, the 'Young Country'
Slow, intimate and with an adumbrative ending, Between Two Women would, I'm sure, be an altogether better film with a new soundtrack and some substantial re-editing.
