Poor Rita Tushingham--she did seem to inherit some strangely frustrating parts.
In "A Taste of Honey" she was a young pregnant girl, first abandoned by her itinerant sailor, then landing in a "relationship" with a sadly confused chap.
In "Girl with Green Hair," she's another adolescent who falls for a man twice her age. Won't she ever learn?
Director Desmond Davis' work resembles Tony Richardson's so much that their styles are almost interchangeable. It may be because Composer John Addison also scored Richardson's "A Taste of Honey," and "Loneliness of the Long Distant Runner." It's remarkable how Addison's bleakly dissonant style so greatly influences the moods of these dramas.
With Davis employing a lot of contrapuntal passages played by a thin woodwind ensemble--often featuring a solo oboe--one does feel the emptiness and loneliness of character emotions.
There was no one who embodied the "Cockney Kitchen Sink" dramas of the 60s like Tushingham. She was perfect for her parts. Here ably supported by Peter Finch as a blase older man and Lynn Redgrave as a daftly talkative friend, Tushingham plays her role to the hilt.
By the end, the viewer has come to experience a limited encounter--rather doomed from the start--between a worldly wise Dublin land owner and working class Brit girl . . . the latter of whom is finally able to move on with her education and find acquaintances more her age.
The viewer during this visit has experienced some telling scenes of Irish-English life, and an interesting adolescent/mature fling at a brief encounter.
