The Romantic English Woman

An important criteria of any work of art is its ability to mould the mood of its audience; to present a system of feeling and thinking that will be accepted despite any preliminary bias towards other systems. Some films are only to be enjoyed when one is in a particular mood, or when one possesses a particular view of life. Such films are inherently limited for 'art' should rise above such differences.

The 'Romantic Englishwoman' is one of those. Within its own terms of reference it is reasonably competent, but it fails to engage the audiences sympathy or even acceptance. Joseph Losey has tried to create droll 'English' humour - very slow moving, very very dry.

As the title suggests, the film is supposed to be the epitomy of the 'English temperament'. It is the story of a bored affluent English couple - Elizabeth (Glenda Jackson) and Lewis (Michael Caine).

Elizabeth escapes for a holiday to Baden-Baden and meets in the lift a failed drug-smuggler, Thomas (Helmut Berger). Lewis is very jealous, and his imagined version of this meeting is incorporated in the soppy screen play he happens to be writing. After Elizabeth's return, Thomas comes to stay on the strength of this casual meeting and a pretended admiration of Lewis's writing. Thomas is the world's most sophisticated bludger: Lewis allows him to stay for as long as he likes, out of what - ennui, sadism, masochism? (Apparently Joseph Losey thinks it is an important question, for he builds a lot of the film around it.)

Eventually Elizabeth runs off with Thomas (he is the symbol of her desire for freedom). In typical gangster film style we have several sequences of sports cars on winding Italian roads, as Thomas is chased by his heroin cronies, who for the sake of ending the film, want to kill him. But not before a last noble gesture that leaves Lewis and Elizabeth back together and Thomas knocked off for his pains. There is a final shot in which Thomas throws his brief case from the hotel balcony to Elizabeth waiting below. God knows why!

The film invites comparison between itself and the deliberately soppy screenplay Lewis is writing. Unfortunately this cuts a bit close to the bone. Gerry Fisher's photography is very beautiful, but very shallow, the scenes of bored, affluent life certainly convey the boredom well. And the melodramatic heroin smuggling) is a bit hard to take, especially as it is obviously tacked on to enliven things up a bit.

Occasionally however, the 'dry English humour', which in the absence of anything else I presume the film is about, does come across. There is one beautiful moment when Lewis and Elizabeth are busy screwing in their backyard at ten at night when their next-door neighbour rolls up in his jag and strolls over unconcernedly to make cocktail party conversation.

This film also aspires to social comment. The title comes from Thomas' description of women in lonely hotels who payed for young men to sleep with them - the most romantic he says, was an Englishwoman - 'All she wanted was everything!'. And there are many more inserts about Elizabeth's social and sexual oppression. 'Are you discontented?', her husband asks her: 'I would be', she replies, 'if only I felt I had the right.' Don't get me wrong - I m not saying she's not bored and oppressed. And in some places, Thomas Wiseman and Tom Stoppard's screenplay conveys this well. But generally the message is presented in such a corny heavy-handed way that it is ineffective. The film also feels bound to comment on the decadence of Lewis and Elizabeth's life style. Thomas says that it's not he who should be grateful to them but they who should be grateful for what they've got. Which is all very true, but I'm afraid made me yawn rather than sigh sympathetically.

Art means communication, and that means both having something to say and being able to say it. The Romantic Englishwoman' may have something to say, but it rather falls down on the saying part.

— Gerard Couper