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.
