allen-conway-1

This is about as undramatic a film as it's possible to make.

I didn't see it in the cinema but instead watched a DVD. The sound effects are pretty terrible - lots of clinking of keys and plod by plod descending of stairs. The actors put nothing into the film, and with a script that plods along too, providing no drama, whether it be in the sub-story of the political activist - a sub-story that doesn't seem to me to serve any useful purpose - or in the main story, the search of a way out of the family's financial problems. The English sub-titles too are very poor grammatically, and often quite poor as far as English goes. That, however, is the least of this film's problems. Not a film I would ever wish to watch again.

Unfunny all the way through. Only the ballet of the minis driving through the streets of Turin is worth watching - 10 minutes or so. The rest is pure drivel. The jokes, coming in the first part of the film, are an embarrassment. There is no acting of any kind. The plot is a featureless Siberian landscape. Noel Coward shows just how bad an actor he was - he recites. Michael Cane is hardly any better. There are a few mini skirts and dolly birds cavorting about in an attempt to keep alive the image of swinging, trendy Britain. The script is lousy. The director is talentless. The actors are lacklustre. Only Benny Hill shows his talent in his chosen field of dirty old men - cringe worthy to the core.

This really is about as bad a film as it's possible to make. First time viewers would be advised to look at the first scene, which is faintly reminiscent of Orson Welles' A Touch of Evil (ha! ha!) and the car chase through Turin. The rest is just a waste of time.

The "pupils" are completely unbelievable, as is their behaviour. The goings-on seem to represent an attempt by a gay author to invent some kind of gay utopia where groping testicles and the other bits and pieces constitutes a perfectly reasonable after-school activity for a teacher.

There are quite a few history boys in the story but only a few are catered for in the script, except to ram in some stupid point or other. There is some class warfare - universities are of course all, and only, about class. Most of the boys combine crass behaviour and crass teenager-type mindsets with superior intelligence, or so we are meant to believe. The headmaster is a caricature, as is the overweight, gay teacher. The only sympathetic character is the female history teacher, and we of course don't see much of her.

It's hard to know what this film is about. A criticism of class attitudes to education? A criticism of our still heterosexual-oriented society? It's not about the pupils or about truth and lies, I don't think. All in all I would say it's just 2 hours of glibness written by someone who can do much better.