Family Life

Forced by her parents to abort her unborn child, a teenager suffers a nervous breakdown and is taken to a psychiatrist, but the effectiveness is limited as her parents refuse to accept blame in this unpleasant yet encapsulating human drama from Ken Loach. With a cast of non-professional and first time actors, Loach manages to elicit some very down-to-earth performances and there are several memorable moments throughout as the girl struggles to cop with her loss. At one point, she draws a replacement child on her stomach with tears coming out of its eyes; at another point, she takes to deliriously spray-painting plants and trees blue as a form of expression. The film loses focus at times though with side scenes in which the hospital staff debate whether her psychiatrist's unconventional approach to therapy is worthwhile. The dialogue is also a tad problematic as the psychiatrist tends to lecture the parents at length, however, the girl's mother and father are given several great lines, most notably a flippant "who's making this code of living?" in regards to 1970s permissiveness. Other memorable quotes include "everyone's a bit peculiar" and "control is the answer" as the girl tries to ascertain whether she knows best or her parents do. This in turn is where the key strength of the film lies: the struggle of a youth to become independent when all she has ever known is dependency on her parents.

Described by the late David Shipman as a "scream of rage against the suburbs", 'Kenneth' Loach (as he then called himself) and Tony Garnett took a advantage of the freak success enjoyed by their company Kestral's 'Kes' to make probably their bleakest and most nihilistic film, based on their 1967 Play for Today 'In Two Minds' by David Mercer.

The additional of colour if anything actually makes the film look drabber, perfectly complementing the heroine's downward slide into a listless & resigned zombie doped up to the eyeballs on tranquillisers. You only have to listen to the heroine's ghastly mother talking non-stop and never listening where the poor girl's problems really originated.

The famous Loach style was already well in evidence, with all that spontaneity achieved by shooting such a vast amount of footage that one day the Arriflex burned out. Seen after fifty years it's also poignant that Sandy Ratcliffe like Carol White eventually came to a sad end.

Family Life I've seen this movie at the end of the seventies, in France, on TV. I registered it, but I lost the tape. Since, I remember a great film, the first of Ken Loach I think. Always in my memory is the last scene, Janice alone behind the students in the amphitheater's and doctor saying that the problem is in his mind and no in the relationship with her parents. I read in some reviews of this time that Ken Loach based his story on the "antipsychiatrics theories" of Dr. Ronald Laing and Cooper, that I studied in France when I was scholar, theories developed in the neighborhood of Jean Paul Sartre's existential psychoanalysis. Recently, a friend of mine, teacher of English literature in my college, initiate a curse on these problems with her students. She needs the original script of this film, but we don't know other that the French translation issued in the L'Avant-Scène french review.. Who could send me part of the script of this film (in English)? Thanks.

1st watched 9/2/2002 - 7 out of 10(Dir-Ken Loach): Well played and disturbing documentary style movie about one messed-up family's life but more specifically the life of one of the children. Janice was supposedly perfect growing up, but went bad according to her parents when she started speaking her own mind and making her own decisions. The parents lost control of her and throughout this movie they seemed to be trying to fight for it back. The camera follows this family through the qwest of trying to find out what's wrong with Janice and why she's having so many problems. The sad thing is that no-one really figures this out despite many different treatments that are done on her. This movie is played out like a documentary case study, but it's actually a film played out by actors but it is done so well that it's hard for anyone to tell. Movies like this are more than entertainment, they are sobering melo-drama's about the hard things of life and how we do and don't cope with them.

Ironically this film comes across as being considerably more true to life than the numerous "docusoaps" that currently clog up the schedules on British television. Watching Family Life is as close as one can get to feeling like an actual fly on the wall. Sandy Ratcliffe is heartbreaking as the young dazed and confused schizophrenic girl, whose condition deteriorates thanks to her domineering parents. Bill Dean and Grace Cave are all too believable as the aforementioned mother and father, and are true screen monsters. Despite never believing that they are in the wrong, neither of the "oh so reasonable" parents are able to see beyond the end of their noses.

This film does have some touching moments but, alas, the ending is not a happy one. Which is especially a shame as the film does occasionally allow a faint glimmer of hope shine through.