A Taste of Rita


We went to the Cinemateque to see A Taste of Honey. It's a great movie even though the basic plot sounds like an after school special: poor girl with floozy mother meets black sailor, falls in love gets pregnant, sailor leaves, moves out of home, meets gay kid her age, move in together, fight and hug. sort of. It actually plays out more like an Alan Clarke than anything else; Very matter of fact style, no real closure to speak of other than uncertainty. One of the great things about it is the star, Rita Tushingham. The whole time while watching it I couldn't figure out if she was a non actor or the best actor I had ever seen. She's weird looking, with this sorta protruding duck mouth, bulgy eyes, very awkward but also very compelling and beautiful. In A Taste of Honey, she's short tempered and giggly and super poutey. She's like every interesting girl you ever knew and she makes the movie. A Taste of Honey is not available on dvd/tape here in america, otherwise Family would carry it. But hopefully soon. looking at her film list, she was in a bunch of mid sixties 'teen' movies and then it slowly sputters out to barely anything.

posted by sammy at 6:09 AM
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