- Actors: Emily Lloyd, Tom Bell, Jesse Birdsall, Clare Clifford, Barbara Durkin
- Directors: David Leland
- Writers: David Leland
- Producers: Sarah Radclyffe
- Format: PAL
- Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
- Number of discs: 1
- Classification: 15
- Studio: Cinema Club
- DVD Release Date: 20 Mar 2000
- Run Time: 92 minutes
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
- ASIN: B00004S8IC
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 84,654 in Film & TV (See Top 100 in Film & TV)
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Set in Brighton in 1951, Wish You Were Here contrasts an England of post-war conformity with the free-spirited nature of a girl, Lynda, on the verge of womanhood, played by the then 17-year-old Emily Lloyd, giving one of the great screen debuts. Filled with youthful energy, good-natured yet delighting in shocking the prudish world around her, Lynda is innocently flirtatious and eager to discover sex. She can't quite understand why everyone disapproves so much, and the film expertly balances uproarious comedy with drama in what is essentially a complex character study. The second, darker half has shades of Lolita, with the excellent Tom Bell in the older man role, while Lynda herself in some ways anticipates Laura Dern's Rambling Rose (1991). Director David Leland also wrote the Brighton thriller, Mona Lisa (1986), and Personal Services (1987) based on the true story of the madam, Cynthia Payne. It is on Payne's own early memories, as told to Leland, that the fictional Wish You Were Here is partly based, while Leland went on to further explore female sexual awakening in The Land Girls (1997), again exploring female sexual awakening --Gary S. Dalkin
DVD Description
DVD Special Features:
Video Aspect Ratio: Feature 4:3
Main Soundtrack: English Mono
Subtitles: None
Disc Format: Single Sided, Single Layer DVD 5
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fabulous movie!,
By
This review is from: Wish You Were Here [DVD] (DVD)
This was one of the few good movies to come out of the 80s. Although I am not keen on films with this sort of theme, I found this an absolute tonic! Hilariously funny in places, which will have you in tears with laughter - before it gets a bit more 'serious' that is. Emily Lloyd is superb as Linda - the girl with 'attitude', and is most entertaining as we follow her story from the little girl who says 'bum' during a prim family gathering, to a young woman who ends up pregnant after 'bonking' an older man (Tom Bell) in her father's garden shed! Mixed in with the silliness, we do have some rather moving scenes about a girl who is looking for affection and attention from anywhere she can get it, but doesn't have in inkling on how to go about it... Instead, she sells herself short, and soon discovers that the easiest way to obtain it is to 'flaunt' her sexuality at anything in trousers. Ironically though, this often results into tremendously comic scenes rather than sympathetic ones, and these, however prim the viewer, will simply have to be amused by. Just try and be offended when you see Emily Lloyd's character run around the garden skipping late at night singing and shouting 'up your bum'! I guarantee this will have you in stitches! Buy this now - it's been unavailable for too long! Enjoy!
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wishing She Was Elsewhere,
By Mike Cormack (Aberdeen UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Wish You Were Here [DVD] (DVD)
The latter of two British films scripted by David Leland and based upon the life of Cynthia Payne, a former madam and prostitute (the other, released just five months earlier, being "Personal Services", featuring Julie Walters), this film looks at her early life and sexual experiences. It does so in the style of a 1960s "kitchen sink" drama, focusing on the everyday aspects of sex and sexuality, such as condoms and nosy uncles. But this film is made absolutely unforgettable by the performance of Emily Lloyd, playing "Linda" (the Cynthia Payne character), in which she displays remarkable fire, vigour, over-brimming life and downright bare-faced cheek (in more ways than one!).
In fact Lloyd's performance is so dazzling that it makes you feel that it is being contrasted against the grim grey boring 1950s the characters inhabit. It's a setting where decorum is more important than feelings which are to be repressed, and sex is often a matter of ignorance or salacious advantage-taking. In this setting Linda explodes, a dervish who kicks against all repression and breaks every rule simply because she wants to. Maybe her behaviour is childish and attention-seeking, but then so were the 1960s in many ways. And this is just about my only criticism of the film - the 1950s are presented as a monochrome, uniform, dull and repressive era, when in fact they had jazz and early rock and roll and Abstract Expressionism in art, all of which were as exciting as British Invasion and Mary Quant and the Mini. Never mind, each generation paints an unflattering picture of that preceding it, and this repressive atmosphere of course heightens the constrast between the seemingly irrepresible Linda and the dull times she lived in. I say "seemingly" of course because Linda does get damaged by the events and escapades she goes into, sometimes naively, sometimes more as a victim. The ending in particular is a feel-good fantasy of an ending, especially given the darker second half of the film showing the consequences of all her transgressions. But all the same, this is an extremely enjoyable film, with a stunning lead and solid support (I especially like the apparently unflappable psychologist whom she runs ring around), and with a fair evocation of a time when seaside postcards were the limit of a nation's bawdy instincts. A more innocent time perhaps, but as this films shows, not necessarily a better time.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant!,
By
This review is from: Wish You Were Here [DVD] (DVD)
I loved this film the first time I watched it and have watched it numerous times since but it still makes me laugh. Emily Lloyd plays a 'troubled' and rebellious teenager in this black comedy set in the 1940's. The film is both very sad and extremely funny and definitely worth a watch!
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