Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

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Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#1 Post by MichaelB » Thu Nov 12, 2009 6:33 pm

Full specs announced:
In January 2010 the BFI will issue Gerry O'Hara's That Kind of Girl (1963) on DVD and Blu-ray as part of the Flipside collection.

In 1960s London, a beautiful continental au pair finds herself wrestling with the affections of an earnest peace-protestor, a dashing young toff and a roguish older man. But fun and freedom turn to shame and despair when she finds that her naivety has put her lovers, and their partners – including the well-meaning Janet (played by Big Zapper's Linda Marlowe, in her first role) – at risk.

Stylishly shot in crisp black and white, and set against a backdrop of smoky jazz clubs, 'Ban the Bomb' marches, and evocative London locations, this finely-tuned cautionary tale was the directorial debut of Gerry O'Hara (All the Right Noises, The Brute), and is presented in a new high-definition transfer.

Special features:
• All films newly mastered to High Definition
The People at No. 19 (J B Holmes, 1948, 17 mins): an intense and effective melodrama which explores the themes of adultery, sexual hygiene and pregnancy from the perspective of an earlier era
No Place to Hide (Derrick Knight, 1959, 10 mins): a snapshot of the first 'Ban the Bomb' march to Aldermaston
A Sunday in September (James Hill, 1961, 27 mins): a compelling documentary, from the director of Black Beauty, about a nuclear disarmament demonstration in London, with Vanessa Redgrave, Doris Lessing and John Osbourne
• Robert Hartford-Davis interview (1968, 14 mins): That Kind of Girl's producer discusses his film career and production methods
• Extensive illustrated booklet featuring essays from novelist Cathi Unsworth and director Gerry O'Hara
Last edited by MichaelB on Mon Nov 30, 2009 8:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Flipside: That Kind of Girl

#2 Post by MichaelB » Fri Nov 13, 2009 6:30 am

I can now confirm that the Blu-ray will be region-free.

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#3 Post by cdnchris » Sun Jan 03, 2010 5:42 pm



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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#5 Post by MichaelB » Fri Jan 15, 2010 8:32 am

Cathode Ray Tube.

There's a slightly contentious passage in this review, namely:
What irks me about That Kind Of Girl is that, as essayist Cathi Unsworth points out, the central character Eva, a heavily accented Austrian 'blonde bombshell' working as an au pair in London, is portrayed within the film, and in its sensationalist marketing, as a slut of the highest degree, no better than a dirty street walker it seems, because she just happened to have caught VD from a rather horrible man, Elliot Collier, who then continues to torment the poor girl, after a failed attempt to rape her, via a series of malicious phone calls.
In actual fact, Cathi Unsworth wrote:
With only a three-weeks in which to shoot, and no input into the script, the young O’Hara still managed to subtly shade this ‘quickie’ away from the po-faced, class-skewered morality tale it so obviously set out to be, with witty nuances and sympathy for his characters that would later hallmark his great trilogy The Pleasure Girls (1965), All The Right Noises (1969) and The Brute (1976), films that all probe the guilty secrets, fears and hypocrisies of their times. Rather than letting Eva appear to be the dim-witted, gold-digging slut that the script implies, Keil plays her as a genuine innocent, damned by her beauty to be stalked on all sides by men who, as Mrs Millar foretold, are only after one thing.

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#6 Post by MichaelB » Sat Jan 16, 2010 4:40 am

I watched the Blu-ray last night, and it's a fascinating piece of work - very much of its time, but that's not just a bonus but largely its raison d'être, at least as far as viewers in 2010 are concerned. The second half establishes it as a feature-length equivalent of the films on the BFI's Joy of Sex Education DVD (one of which, The People at No. 19, is included here as an extra, but this time in HD), but because it's a feature film and had to be released through normal commercial channels the filmmakers clearly decided (almost certainly correctly) that some subjects wouldn't get past the BBFC.

Accordingly, we get a pretty graphic description of the symptoms of syphilis (and those aware of the period will probably be as startled as I was to hear non-euphemistic references to "genitals" and "intercourse" in a mainstream British feature), but aside from a passing reference to "taking precautions", there's no practical advice as to how to prevent STDs - the moral message is still that sex before marriage is invariably Sinful, and of course the acts themselves occur several minutes after discreet fadeouts. (The prominent X certificate on the posters reproduced in the booklet has since dwindled to a 12 - not that I can imagine too many twelve-year-olds watching this). The lengthy scenes in the clinic were probably far more tediously finger-wagging in 1963 than they are now - social and medical changes in the last 47 years have turned them into a genuinely enthralling quasi-documentary study of a time when antibiotics still had to be injected and euphemism still reigned supreme.

Like the vast majority of in-house BFI transfers, it frequently looks stunning - as others have reported, there are occasional issues with tramlines on the source print, though these have been digitally minimised to the point where they barely register. I can easily see why that print was used, as it's otherwise in superb condition. I was slightly surprised by the 1.33:1 aspect ratio (most British features of the time would have been 1.66:1 or 1.85:1), though there's no question you're getting the full picture - and director Gerry O'Hara was involved with the release, so it's safe to assume it came with his approval.

I haven't watched the extras yet, but the booklet is up to usual Flipside standards - 32 pages including an invaluable context-setting essay by Cathi Unsworth, O'Hara's reminiscences about making the film, hefty biographies of O'Hara and Linda Marlowe, the biggest name in the cast, and notes on the extras and the transfer.

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#7 Post by GaryC » Fri Jan 22, 2010 3:56 am

I've just watched it. I can think of one other British film from the same year, shot (mostly) in 35mm, that's in Academy Ratio - It Happened Here. Or at least it was shown that way at the NFT in a screening which Kevin Brownlow introduced and did a Q&A afterwards. That said, the opening credits and caption are clearly framed for a wider ratio, and - by eye - I'd say the film could be comfortably shown in 1.66:1. But as you say, Gerry O'Hara might prefer it full-frame and open-matte.

I've noticed with other films from around that time - A Kind of Loving, for example, or The World Ten Times Over (just released on DVD, and which I saw recently) - that there's a wish to push the envelope but with an awareness of what the BBFC would accept. It's very noticeable that we *don't* hear one character's obscene phone calls. On the other hand, we get a fairly prolonged striptease scene (I wonder if that was among the cuts the BBFC made in 1963?) and Linda Marlowe in her underwear. Gerry O'Hara wasn't involved in the editing or the script, and I wonder if these scenes were intended as exploitation elements.

The US title was the much blunter Teenage Tramp, by the way.

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#8 Post by MichaelB » Fri Jan 22, 2010 8:14 am

GaryC wrote:I've just watched it. I can think of one other British film from the same year, shot (mostly) in 35mm, that's in Academy Ratio - It Happened Here. Or at least it was shown that way at the NFT in a screening which Kevin Brownlow introduced and did a Q&A afterwards. That said, the opening credits and caption are clearly framed for a wider ratio, and - by eye - I'd say the film could be comfortably shown in 1.66:1. But as you say, Gerry O'Hara might prefer it full-frame and open-matte.
It would certainly have been screened at 1.66:1 in a great many cinemas, but I think we can very safely assume that the 4:3 ratio is director-approved. Unlike, say, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner or The Bed-Sitting Room, this transfer was created under the direct supervision of the BFI - and my colleagues tend to be hypersensitive about fundamental issues like this.
I've noticed with other films from around that time - A Kind of Loving, for example, or The World Ten Times Over (just released on DVD, and which I saw recently) - that there's a wish to push the envelope but with an awareness of what the BBFC would accept. It's very noticeable that we *don't* hear one character's obscene phone calls. On the other hand, we get a fairly prolonged striptease scene (I wonder if that was among the cuts the BBFC made in 1963?) and Linda Marlowe in her underwear. Gerry O'Hara wasn't involved in the editing or the script, and I wonder if these scenes were intended as exploitation elements.
Oh, almost certainly. As you say, this isn't remotely a film d'auteur - O'Hara was a hired hand who was only involved with the actual shooting, and it's greatly to his credit that the film transcends what was clearly primarily intended as an exploitation film with "educational" elements that would almost certainly have been put in there primarily to provide some context to ensure that the BBFC treated it more leniently.

BBFC Secretary John Trevelyan was well aware of what the filmmakers were doing, of course, but he was quite keen on liberalising the BBFC too (until the great relaxation of 2000, his tenure saw the greatest liberalisation in the BBFC's history), so was happy to go along with it. Not least because it gave him the freedom to pass important titles like Repulsion uncut - which, incidentally, was another film produced by Michael Klinger and Tony Tenser that was nominally intended as a cheap exploitation vehicle, though in this case it utterly eclipsed its origins in a way that Gerry O'Hara didn't quite manage to do with That Kind of Girl. Mind you, Roman Polanski had the significant advantage of script input and an Oscar nomination for his previous feature, which probably helped.

I don't know if That Kind of Girl is the BBFC-scissored version, but I can certainly confirm that the disc was sourced from the longer of two prints held by the BFI National Archive - happily, this was also the one in the best physical condition. For the record, the footage lengths were 6,668 feet and 7,048 feet, which notionally translates to 74:05/71:07 and 78:18/75:10 (at 24fps/25fps speeds) though that's not necessarily reflective of the disc running times, as extraneous material like obsolete distributor logos might have been trimmed at the mastering stage.

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#9 Post by antnield » Fri Jan 22, 2010 3:36 pm

DVD Times on the Blu.

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#10 Post by MichaelB » Sun Jan 24, 2010 5:38 am

DVD Outsider on the Blu.

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#11 Post by MichaelB » Mon Jan 25, 2010 6:25 pm

Beaver on the Blu.

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#12 Post by MichaelB » Wed Jan 27, 2010 5:28 pm


cathoderaytube

Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#13 Post by cathoderaytube » Thu Jan 28, 2010 11:56 am

MichaelB wrote:Cathode Ray Tube.

There's a slightly contentious passage in this review, namely:
What irks me about That Kind Of Girl is that, as essayist Cathi Unsworth points out, the central character Eva, a heavily accented Austrian 'blonde bombshell' working as an au pair in London, is portrayed within the film, and in its sensationalist marketing, as a slut of the highest degree, no better than a dirty street walker it seems, because she just happened to have caught VD from a rather horrible man, Elliot Collier, who then continues to torment the poor girl, after a failed attempt to rape her, via a series of malicious phone calls.
In actual fact, Cathi Unsworth wrote:
With only a three-weeks in which to shoot, and no input into the script, the young O’Hara still managed to subtly shade this ‘quickie’ away from the po-faced, class-skewered morality tale it so obviously set out to be, with witty nuances and sympathy for his characters that would later hallmark his great trilogy The Pleasure Girls (1965), All The Right Noises (1969) and The Brute (1976), films that all probe the guilty secrets, fears and hypocrisies of their times. Rather than letting Eva appear to be the dim-witted, gold-digging slut that the script implies, Keil plays her as a genuine innocent, damned by her beauty to be stalked on all sides by men who, as Mrs Millar foretold, are only after one thing.
Yes, you're quite right. It wasn't my intention for it to come across as such. I was actually trying to say that I agreed with Cathi Unsworth that despite the exploitative nature of the script and marketing, O'Hara actually skews the film more in favour of Keil's innocence in the role. I've re-adjusted that review to reflect my original intention.

That's what you get for writing reviews to a deadline in the early hours of the morning!

Many thanks.

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#14 Post by MichaelB » Sun Jan 31, 2010 4:45 am

DVD Times on the DVD.

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#15 Post by Duncan Hopper » Fri Feb 05, 2010 9:28 am

I've had a few emails from Amazon.co.uk in the last week or so saying they're still waiting for stock from the BFI.
This has been in stock for ages at the BFI. :(

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#16 Post by RossyG » Fri Feb 05, 2010 11:24 am

Get it from HMV.

Same price, they're really quick, and their packaging is sturdier.

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#17 Post by Wu.Qinghua » Fri Feb 05, 2010 12:40 pm

Preordering BFI DVDs at amazon's doesn't work well, does it? I've also preordered That Kind of Girl, Permissive and so on and they wrote me, they may ship it on the 15th of February.

And guess what I got today! Miners' Campaign Tapes!! I preordered it the week Michael announced its release on the forums. Until then I got a lot of messages of it being out of stock, it being shipped, its shipping having been delayed because of it being out of stock again, me being refunded, it being shipped now and so on.

Why does this preordering at amazon's work that bad? Anyone's got an idea?

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#18 Post by MichaelB » Fri Feb 05, 2010 1:07 pm

RossyG wrote:Get it from HMV.

Same price, they're really quick, and their packaging is sturdier.
I ordered from HMV for the first time a couple of weeks or so (the Blu-ray of The Double Life of Veronique, for what that's worth), and was very impressed - speedy delivery and nice thick cardboard packaging. Not quite up to the benchmark set by Merlin.pl with its three layers of cardboard and two layers of tape, but not at all bad.

So I'll definitely be using them again.

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#19 Post by Duncan Hopper » Mon Feb 08, 2010 2:38 pm

Still no delivery date from Amazon, so I've canceled my order and ordered it from HMV, who have it listed as 'in stock'.

So, do HMV have a deal with the BFI on all titles? I know they had exclusives on Kim Newman's Guide to the Flipside and The Leopard.
Do they get all titles early? If so I'll be switching to HMV for my all my BFI pre-orders.

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#20 Post by Wu.Qinghua » Tue Feb 09, 2010 7:48 am

Oops ... I can't remember that I got any note on shipping, but amazon obviously has started shipping the discs. "That Kind of Girl" arrived in Germany over the weekend.

Having seen the movie and the complementary shorts, I am a bit stunned over the lukewarm reviews this DVD edition found on the internet. In my opinion, it's not only an amazing package, but also a model edition. Of course, O'Hara's first film is not a masterpiece, but it stands every comparison with the movies, which have been released as part of "Joy of Sex Education" last year. And above all, it offers very interesting representations of sexuality, gender relations and CND activism around 1960. And though I couldn't find the Robert Hartford-Davies interview to be of interest, I regard the three shorts to be very reasonable extras, which help to establish a deepened understanding on both topics (though I'd liked to see another educational movie, which had'nt been released on "Joy of ...", I admit, that People of No. 19 is quite a good choice).

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#21 Post by Cash Flagg » Thu Mar 04, 2010 10:03 pm

Sigh. Amazon just pushed this back another month.

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#22 Post by Duncan Hopper » Sat Mar 06, 2010 4:40 am

Cash Flagg wrote:Sigh. Amazon just pushed this back another month.
I don't know what problem Amazon have with BFI titles, but I've had to switch to HMV to get my BFI titles.

I gave up waiting after two weeks, ordered the titles from HMV and got them the next day.

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#23 Post by MichaelB » Wed Sep 28, 2011 8:56 am

This will be reissued as a Dual Format edition on October 24 - details here.

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#24 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Mar 24, 2015 7:52 am

I really liked this film, although it is at times couched in rather heavy handed moralising about promiscuity bringing disease and disrupting relationships that does place it in the company of all of those Joy of Sex Education films that the BFI released, especially in its second half when it becomes about a series of people visiting the doctor, and their reactions to having to do that. This debut film by Gerry O'Hara therefore is not quite as good as his more fully developed film such as All The Right Noises years later (it was not too surprising to read in the booklet that O'Hara had literally just directed the filming of scenes of this and nothing else, the story had been written, presumably on spec, before he arrived, and O'Hara was not present for either the editing or the adding of the rock and roll soundtrack. Even though all of these aspects are still better than average even without his input!), but it is great to see his first film anyway and despite some of the impositions there is still a care taken with (most of) the main characters to understand them, particularly 'that kind of girl' at the centre of everything, the Austrian au pair Eva.

It was interesting to read the comments about the Cathi Unsworth essay further up the page. I would definitely agree that Eva is in no way portrayed as a 'slut', but at the same time would take issue with the idea that Eva is a "genuine innocent" either. It is too reductive to the film to suggest it portrays her as totally the other way too. Eva is more a portrait of a young woman exploring her sexual freedom and identity in the world (much to the chagrin of the snooty middle class CND activists she meets, who give Eva little to no chance to fit in and see her as a symbol of everything wrong with the 'youth of today', born after the Second World War and having no concept of danger, just looking for reckless hedonism), who unfortunately gets comprehensively failed by all of the men that she meets in various different ways.

(I did like Eva's repeated murmured defensive comments of "I didn't know" to people after she has to inform them of catching syphillis. They ring hollow (especially as we have seen the casual boyfriend switching early on in the film), but I don't feel that they really 'expose her lies', but they are more the appropriate act of contrition that she has to keep providing to apologise for putting others in that position)

Eva gets exposed to a whole variety of masculine failures in this film, bouncing around from belligerent chip on their shoulder intellectuals (Max) to older sugar daddies (Elliot, who, despite being the villian of the film, is the only one who actually seems touchingly, desperately and deeply moved by their sexual relationship. Albeit to the point of becoming a stalker! That's the older generation for you I suppose, not quite grasping the 'casual' part of casual sex!) to the young man (Keith) torn between the old and new philosophies towards sex, desperately wanting to settle down and get married to a long term sweetheart but also being frustrated at there being no sex before marriage. So he fools around on the side as the next best option!

Eva definitely isn't a genuine innocent though. If she was, she'd be a far less interesting character. Eva's problem is that she is far too casual about juggling multiple ongoing relationships at the same time (she is really kind of the 'villain' of the first section of the film, flitting from man to man and moving on without any explanation when they prove to be disappointing), and is far too liberal with her contact details, and pays the price for it.

I like to think that the film, despite the primary sex education theme, is much more about the clash between repression and rebellion. Eva is rebelling in some ways, revelling in the brief window of opportunities to go out and enjoy herself that she did not have in Austria (and really is there any hope of a long term relationship if she is only in Britain for a short time?). She is even working against the attitudes that those around her are imposing on her, or assuming of her - from being a blonde Bardot-styled bimbo who doesn't know better, to an apolitical hedonist, to a good time girl afraid of commitment, to simply not accepting the continual confusion of her being from Germany and instead gently insisting that she is Austrian instead and there there is a definite difference, especially when the Second World War is continually brought up, only to be met by blank "who cares?" looks (who would have thought that "What is the Austrian's attitude towards Hitler?" wouldn't work as a chat up line!). It is telling that outside of Elliott the stalker and the smug front room chatter of her happily married employers that almost all of these attitudes come from the CND marchers. This is a film that doesn't have too much time for over-controlling activists (or the pompous ones who we meet at least!), who care deeply about one issue to the exclusion of everything else and appear to see our heroine's 'plurality' and self-will as a dangerous threat to their regimented, having an opinion of everything and everyone attitude, knowing the part that everyone should play from the moment that they meet them.

Eva's life as an au pair in London has left her escape and explore, so it is just distressing that this exploration lands her in deep trouble. However one of the great aspects of this film is that, despite having to make Eva contrite for catching and passing on syphillis, it doesn't push further to suggest that Eva's entire approach to life was wrong. More she just met all the wrong people in her travels (note: if your boyfriend takes you to a strip club on your first date, even if it is full to the brim Jess Franco-style with other jaded-looking middle aged couples also 'enjoying' the show, you should be wary and not starstruck by his sophistication!). And the film might do this through the shift in focus in the second half to the relationship between Keith and his virginal, aspirational suburban middle class fiance Janet. Janet is the 'genuine innocent' in the film, going from pure virginity to being bullied into giving it up to frustrated Keith (who himself I feel is the greater villain than telephone sex pest Elliott!) and then having to go through all of the issues of getting herself and her unborn child tested for syphillis afterwards. In some ways Janet is the one who gets the 'moral lesson' of the film: that there is no such thing as "that kind of girl" whose fault it is for bringing disease on herself, which she finds out to her cost. I love that the film has Eva and Janet meet near to the end, and that the meeting itself takes place in a low key way.

As with my comments on People At No. 19 when I was going through the Joy of Sex Education films set years ago (and it is nice to see that this film turns up on That Kind of Girl's disc), this film also moves from an 'infection and treatment' message to one about how the main damage done is to trust in relationships. Keith kind of prefigures the adulterous Len in All The Right Noises later on, in the sense that he does terrible damage to the women in his life by his actions, yet he is also allowed to admit his blame and be forgiven by the end of the film. I personally don't forgive him for his actions (Keith throughout has petulently gone off to a club and had sex with Eva when asked to wait a while and finish his university course before marrying by his prospective father-in-law, drops Eva unceremoniously leaving her hanging without officially breaking things off (much as Eva does with Elliott), and on eventually finding out about the possibility of catching syphillis visits a private doctor first to see if he can keep it quiet before giving in and going to the public clinic. I think he's a bit of a monster, and was delighted when Janet finally shows some gumption and does a third act swerve into calling the entire marriage off before going to the clinic herself, which highlighted the damage that Keith had unthinkingly done. It allowed the tenuous reconcilliation in the final act ("Let's be unhappy together") to become more meaningful too) but I love that the film allowed me to make that decision for myself rather than imposing a judgment for me!

That Kind of Girl is a really great little film and well worth anyone's time. Also it has some great Godardian-style street shots of our stunningly beautiful Austrian lead Margaret Rose Keil wandering the dreary streets of London Anna Karina-style! This also anticipates Catherine Deneuve taking more troubled walks through the streets of London in Repulsion a couple of years later, which was made by the same executive producer team of Michael Klinger and Tony Tenser. Anyone who loves Repulsion might be interested in checking out this film because of that and the way events are taking place in the same milleu! Klinger and Tenser also executive produced those mondo documentaries London In The Raw and Primitive London too, and it is interesting to compare the focus on clublife and stripping sequences in those documentaries with the similar but much more coy material that crops up in That Kind of Girl. There is some discussion earlier in the thread about whether the strip sequence was in some ways cut down and there might be a longer version out there, but I love the way that the strip scene is edited, where the stripper is amusingly always just about to reveal her nudity before we suddenly cut back to Eva and Elliott watching. It adds to that sense of Eva being in the lion's den and it all builds to that magnificent final shot of the scene in which Eva and Elliott's faces are in crisp focus on the left side of the screen whilst the stripper is finally shown totally nude on the stage in the far background, yet she is completely out of focus and blurred, so even this shot has the abrasive nudity pushed out of mind! It is a similar method of concealing the crudity that comes into play later on with the way that we never hear Elliott's abusive telephone calls for ourselves but have it played to us through Eva's reactions and loud and abrasive rock music.

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Re: Flipside 008: That Kind of Girl

#25 Post by tenia » Tue Mar 24, 2015 8:48 am

I was positively surprised by the movie too. I didn't expected something as straightforward as That Kind of Girl after things like Primitive London and Herostratus, but found That Kind of Girl (and All the Right Noises) being a very good drama.
With Lunch Hour, it's certainly one of the Flipside I liked most.

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