Year: 1969
Director: Waris Hussein
Screenplay: Margaret Drabble
Starring: Sandy Dennis, Ian McKellan
Synopsis is here:
It’s always something when a film you know little about
opens to be a small gem of a movie. I found A Touch of Love to be a stirring
affair. From a technical point of view, there’s nothing remarkable about it. At
first, the film struggles to find footing for 40 minutes of its running time.
Suddenly the right gear is found, and things soon fall into place. What
could have been an upscaled kitchen sink drama becomes a touching and
progressive feminist feature. It grows into a film with striking emotional earnestness,
something unexpected from its pedestrian beginnings.
A Touch of Love starts disconcertingly. It opens with the
lead protagonist Rosamund (Sandy Dennis), discovering she’s pregnant and making
a hasty decision to terminate the pregnancy. A chance arrival of close friends
derails her decision. When Rosamund decides almost on a whim to keep the child,
the film becomes a mosaic. It leaps back and forth in time, giving background
to Rosamund, the men in her life, and her family before leading to the occasion
of her pregnancy: a one-night stand with a young news presenter (Ian McKellan
in his film debut). With Rosamund’s decision to have the child, the film
centres on her balancing the care for her child while trying to maintain her
studies at the British Museum. The film soon finds focus, with Rosamund having
to navigate a strange world of systems seemingly designed to work for those not
in her unique situation.
Films depicting shifting cultural attitudes like Alfie (1966) and Darling (1965) may be more dynamic in their approach. Yet Sandy Dennis’s deceptively complex performance as Rosemond makes A Touch of Love worthy of a mention alongside the more infamous swinging sixties features. 1969 must have been a strange year for the actress, finding herself as the cornerstone of two distinctive flops. Dennis’ balance of brittle and fierce tenacity is the driving force that propels both A Touch of Love and Robert Altman’s That Cold Day in the Park. The latter film has her character slip into a murderous personality disorder through an apparent repressive family backstory. In A Touch of Love, Dennis’ Rosamund is a strongwilled, feminist character study. While her exterior exhibits the similar fragility of Altman’s film, Dennis ensures that Rosamund is a rather steely unknown quantity who only seems to allow us in when she wishes. She keeps her male acquaintances at a distance, staying non-committal to them as they never seem to give her what she desires. But she's willing to stand up against their behaviour when needed. The inner conflict makes her brief relationship with George more intriguing as his coding marks him out as a closeted homosexual. The young McKellan plays George with all the charm you expect the then-young thespian would. And his charisma helps draw tension to their sometimes-awkward interactions while further marking out the changing cultural times.
Waris Hussein was already no stranger to cultural shifts.
Hussein made his name as the first director of Doctor Who, turning down a
lucrative overseas job with the BBC to work at their home office. Hussein was
not only one of the first non-white directors at the BBC but also a gay Indian
man. It’s of little shock that he’s in sync with the sensibilities of this
issue-led drama. Hussein’s film is not one for technical flair. The camera
knows where it needs to be placed, with very few visuals being particularly
eye-catching. But Hussein mines the actors well for confident, dramatic
moments. Perhaps the most affecting sequence involves Rosamund battling
out-of-touch nurses for the right to see her daughter after a potentially
life-threatening operation. The menacing about the scene is the underlying
thought of nurses doing their best to keep a single mother away from her child.
Simply because they abhor her unconventional lifestyle. It’s never said
outright, but something between the facial exchanges with the female staff
seems to make the implication. Hussein ensures A Touch of Love thrives in its
dramatic moments, even within the film’s more wayward beginnings.
Amicus Productions produced A Touch of Love. The company,
more known for its cheap horror films than anything else, managed to ensure
that the film made a profit by selling it to distributors for more than its
cost. Later, producer Max Rosenberg claimed that A Touch of Love was the best
film Amicus ever made. Despite its flaws, A Touch of Love shows that it is a
text more ahead of its time than perhaps the then-present-day audience gives it
credit for. What appears to be a humdrum melodrama about a repressed
wallflower blooms into a fascinating insight into a woman’s right to choose her
path. A Touch of Love is a deceptive moniker for such a film. It has far more
than a touch to express.
A Touch of Love is available on Blu-ray from 17th March.
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