Customer Reviews

Wish You Were Here

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This movie is about Lynda, a rather delinquent teenage girl growing up after the the Second World War in a bleak and dismal English seaside town. She spends most of the film getting sacked from one job after another and losing her innocence with considerable thoroughness and determination. Working briefly for the local bus company, she eagerly loses her virginity to a rather clumsy young bus conductor who is not slow afterwards to take his custom elsewhere. Somewhat heartbroken, she tries to cheer herself up by throwing herself at Eric, a much older man who has been making advances, with predictably sad results...

Leland has written and realized a masterly script that is sometimes extremely funny and sometimes desperately sad, shifting between these two with enormous sureness of touch. The best thing about it by miles is Emily Lloyd's performance as Lynda, feisty, immensely funny, sometimes appallingly foolish, sometimes downright obnoxious but somehow always completely adorable, which is nothing short of astonishing in its charm and total believability. Perhaps you agree with me that the coming of age movie can sometimes be a pretty tedious genre where one suspects too many writers turn memories of their not very interesting adolescences into not very interesting stories. If so you might be put off seeing this which would be a terrible shame as this utterly fresh and delightful movie is a glorious exception.

Film buffs should rejoice that this outstanding little British gem has finally seen the light of day on DVD. David Leland's 1987 comedy-drama about a headstrong 16-year-old girl's "coming of age" in post WW 2 England only played the arthouses upon on its initial run, so remains largely unknown to U.S. audiences. This movie recalls "golden age" British sex comedies like "Georgy Girl", "The Knack", "The Family Way" and "Alfie". Vivacious teenager Emily Lloyd makes an astounding, Oscar-worthy debut as pretty but potty-mouthed "Linda", whose hormone-fueled manic behavior (...) are causing her somewhat reserved widower father and younger sister to walk around in a perpetual state of public embarrassment. With a taut script and precise performances, the film breezes along on a deft roller coaster of deep belly-laugh hilarity and genuine, bittersweet emotion. Excellent support from the entire cast, especially from the great Thom Bell, who finds a sympathetic humanity in a somewhat vile character that a lesser actor could not likely pull off. The real tragedy here is that Emily Lloyd, who displayed such amazing potential in this debut, never really "broke big", appearing in only a few unremarkable projects and then basically dropping off the radar to join that sad "whatever happened to..." file. The DVD transfer is excellent, no extras to speak of, but this wonderful film speaks for itself!

This film lends courage to girls who sometimes make bad choices. What's wonderful about the ending is that Emily Lloyd's character is still thumbing her nose at the repressed community around her. There's a certain triumph when she declares "yes it's mine, ALL mine" about her newborn baby. Instead of choosing to feel ashamed for having a child out of wedlock, she makes the absolute best of the situation. I highly recommend this film to anyone who has a soft spot in their heart for non-conformity.

Emily Lloyd won international acclaim for her role in this 1987 British film. A motherless teenager raised by a conservative and distant father embarks on an empty search for love in a sleepy coastal English town. A rebel without a cause, defiant, and mouthy, underneath it all is a girl so emotionally deprived and seeking nourishment in all the wrong places. An out-of-wedlock pregnancy solidifies her social pariah status in the community. Based on the British madam Cynthia Payne (the English version of Heidi Fleiss), this outstanding performance is a warning of how fast and deep a spiral reckless teenage girls can go to when they don't feel loved.

This is a gem of a picture that is well worth checking out primarily for the glowing performance of Emily Lloyd as Lynda Mansell, a teenager growing up in Post-war England who defies the staid coventions of her seaside town. Lynda is a young girl who on the surface cheerfully thumbs her nose at society by her outwardly outrageous behavior while internally nursing emotional wounds. Credit director-writer David Leland for intricately explaining the rationale for Lynda's behavior. This film also succeeds in evoking the mood and look of the period. I remember when this film came out that great things were envisioned for Lloyd. She appeared in the Bruce Willis film, "In Country" and "Killing Zoe" but seems to have disappeared. Here's hoping that she emerges on the scene again because she is immensely talented.

It is a very touching, poignant story, but it also is full of many scenes that're guaranteed to make to laugh. Emily is a riot. Love her to pieces!

This is a wonderful movie that explores the sexual awakening of a young girl with candor and humor. Set in a British seaside town a couple of years after WW Two,teenager Lynda [played convincingly by Emily Lloyd] is a foul-mouthed vixen who enjoys making grown men uncomfortable with their own reactions to her overt sexuality. There is more to Lynda's acting out than just a desire to titillate, and her character does elicit our sympathy. Besides Emily Lloyd's wonderful performance as Lynda, Tom Bell does a good job of portraying Lynda's stern & disapproving father. This is a movie that elicits a variety of emotions - its funny and yet poignant.

This is a great movie nuff said. However I can't believe I bought the dvd version imported from the UK and now it won't work here because its on region 2. AAAAAAHHHGGGGGGGHJJJJJJJsdkfjadsf!!!!

Nice little film, it's never clear exactly why Emily Lloyd turns out so daft. Okay, her mom died young, but the old man doesn't seem like such a bad bloke. It didn't add up for me.

Also this flick points out that under certain conditions a troubled girl will do it with anything on two legs.

This was a funny, high-spirited, literate film, but the ending was disgusting and ruined the film for me. Emily Lloyd's character Linda is self-centered, self-absorbed, desperate to be the center of attention at any cost. That's fine as a character study. But in the end she gets impregnated by a wretched, scum bag, dirty-old-man lech. And Linda has the baby, and now that she has total POWER over this baby since she's the poor thing's MOTHER, that's considered some sort of victorious happy ending!!! "I now have control of my fate, yippeee." No, she has control of that baby's fate, which is TRAGIC!! Linda is going to be the most wretched mother for that kid, being, as mentioned, self-centered and self-absorbed. Egomaniacs make terrible parents. And, as with Linda, it's often egomaniacs who want to be parents most, for the control it gives them over a human life. I've known kids with mothers like Linda, and they end up in rehab by age 14. And just on a genetic level, Linda's baby has a bad roll of the dice with the narcissistic mess that is Linda for a mother and that dirty sociopathic lech as its father.

The same ending would have been acceptable if its TONE had been one of TRAGEDY for the unfortunate baby. But to portray the outcome as a "victory" for Linda appalled me.

When I later learned that this film was based on the story of a notorious British madam named Cynthia Payne, who ran a house of ill repute for old-age pensioners and retired military men with kinky tastes, I was hardly surprised.