I'm not talking about a cash dispensing machine outside your bank, here, either! What could have been a very dodgy premise for a drama with comic overtones, Sam Gabarski's film just about gets the balance right.
Marianne Faithful provides a reassuringly measured and dependable performance as the "widow who w*nks". Finding her grandson's very serious illness can only be treated by a costly hospital stay and treatment down in Australia she responds to an ad for a 'hostess' in Central London, and thinking that that would involve making the tea, the look and body language of poor Maggie, when the penny drops is awkward - and priceless.
She does, of course go on to take up the job and in the process, makes quite a name for herself, soon earning the titular name, quite an accolade, apparently, in the appropriate social circles...
In the sleepy village where she lives, the tea-drinking set (including a very prim Jenny Agutter) who tut-tut more than a out-of-tune moped, Maggie finds both a strangely enthusiastic and two-faced response - which actually provide the best lines in the whole film.
The relationship with her son is understandably strained as he thinks only of his sick child and when he eventually discovers his mother's way of getting the cash, the subsequent emotional fireworks are very believable. However, it is Maggie's relationship with her boss, Miki, the rather slimy Eastern European immigrant who is in competition with other Soho establishments that is the most well handled and satisfying.
Of course, there's always going to be unsavoury aspects to this sort of film, depending on one's point of view, of course but generally, it went as far as it needed to. One's imagination more than made up for the rest and we didn't see anything we'd probably not want to, though there is some female nudity.
Before everyone goes out and announces that here is a film that empowers women and gives people with few qualifications a real chance to earn big bucks, it is generally an unlovely movie. The music is monotonous and depressing, the surroundings dour and there is a whiff of desperation, on many fronts. Having said that, it's pretty good, for what it is but thankfully, unlikely to ever to become mainstream.
I saw it (again) on BBC2.
Marianne Faithful provides a reassuringly measured and dependable performance as the "widow who w*nks". Finding her grandson's very serious illness can only be treated by a costly hospital stay and treatment down in Australia she responds to an ad for a 'hostess' in Central London, and thinking that that would involve making the tea, the look and body language of poor Maggie, when the penny drops is awkward - and priceless.
She does, of course go on to take up the job and in the process, makes quite a name for herself, soon earning the titular name, quite an accolade, apparently, in the appropriate social circles...
In the sleepy village where she lives, the tea-drinking set (including a very prim Jenny Agutter) who tut-tut more than a out-of-tune moped, Maggie finds both a strangely enthusiastic and two-faced response - which actually provide the best lines in the whole film.
The relationship with her son is understandably strained as he thinks only of his sick child and when he eventually discovers his mother's way of getting the cash, the subsequent emotional fireworks are very believable. However, it is Maggie's relationship with her boss, Miki, the rather slimy Eastern European immigrant who is in competition with other Soho establishments that is the most well handled and satisfying.
Of course, there's always going to be unsavoury aspects to this sort of film, depending on one's point of view, of course but generally, it went as far as it needed to. One's imagination more than made up for the rest and we didn't see anything we'd probably not want to, though there is some female nudity.
Before everyone goes out and announces that here is a film that empowers women and gives people with few qualifications a real chance to earn big bucks, it is generally an unlovely movie. The music is monotonous and depressing, the surroundings dour and there is a whiff of desperation, on many fronts. Having said that, it's pretty good, for what it is but thankfully, unlikely to ever to become mainstream.
I saw it (again) on BBC2.