Wish You Were Here (1987)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

David Leland

Writer:

David Leland (writer)

Release Date:

24 July 1987 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Tagline:

Some people march to the beat of a different drummer. Lynda's got her own brass band.

Plot:

In a staid English seaside town after the Second World War, young Lynda grows up with her widowed father and younger sister...

Plot Keywords:

Teenage Girl | Used Condom | Film With Ambiguous Title | Premature Ejaculation | Sex With Teenager

Awards:

Won BAFTA Film Award. Another 4 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Emily Lloyd	...	Lynda
Tom Bell	...	Eric
Jesse Birdsall	...	Dave
Clare Clifford	...	Mrs. Parfitt
Barbara Durkin	...	Valerie
Geoffrey Hutchings	...	Hubert
Charlotte Barker	...	Gillian
Chloe Leland	...	Margaret
Charlotte Ball	...	Lynda (aged 11)
Pat Heywood	...	Aunt Millie
Abigail Leland	...	Margaret (aged 7)
Susan Skipper	...	Lynda's Mother
Geoffrey Durham	...	Harry Figgis
Sheila Kelley	...	Joan Figgis
Neville Smith	...	Cinema Manager

Also Known As:

Too Much

Runtime:

92 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:14 | Norway:16 | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:11 | UK:15 | USA:R | West Germany:16

Filming Locations:

Brighton, East Sussex, England, UK

Company:

Channel Four Films

Trivia:

Just like Personal Services (1987), the previous film from writer David Leland, this project was inspired by the real life figure, Cynthia Payne. This film focuses on her childhood while the other dealt with her adulthood.

Quotes:

Lynda Mansell: Up your bum!

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Madam Cyn's Home Movies (2006) (TV)

Wish you were here, but I'm doing just fine, actually

With another actress in the lead, this film could have been another entry in the long, venerable line of British films about the misery of working-class life, a genre that stretches from "kitchen sink" classics like "Room at the Top" and "A Taste of Honey" (wonderfully ironic titles, of course) to such Mike Leigh bleakfests as "Meantime" and "All or Nothing." However, this film stars Emily Lloyd. Her character of Lynda seems written as a fragile, wounded creature driven to extreme behavior by emotional neglect (her mother died when she was young and her father is a stern, distant dope) and a rigid, oppressive social hierarchy (she suffers after being used and abandoned by a series of heartless men who are either older or wealthier than herself). As played by Emily Lloyd, however, Lynda is a joyful nymphomaniac who delights in offending people, kind of a "Happy Hooker Goes to Liverpool." Her outrageous behavior seems less a symptom of willful self-destructiveness than an animating demon impulse. In her dalliances with men, she seems to be seeking sexual satisfaction ("it's very nice, but is that all there is?") instead of love and security. Which makes her a distinctly post-feminist heroine out of "Sex and the City" instead of a victim of injustice out of a Theodore Dreiser novel. Which makes her completely out of sync with the rest of this gray, deterministic film. It doesn't help that Emily Lloyd, at least here, is so beautiful that she's literally luminous -- she seems to glow with a light that isn't shining on anything else in the film. Plus she's so vital and boisterous that we don't believe the circumstances which should be destroying her would even slow her down all that much. The key scene, which will either delight or disgust you, comes midway through the movie when lovely young Lynda takes a midnight stroll in her garden and ends up gamboling about, waking the neighbors (neighbours?) by screaming "up your BUUUUUUUUMMMMM!" at the top of her lungs. Is she a wounded soul begging for love and tolerance? A free spirit kicking against the pricks? A brat who needs to be spanked? Your answer to this question will determine your view of "Wish You Were Here."