To enjoy this brisk, bright love story you have to get past the casting of English actors as Irish characters. Once you switch off that nagging issue an interesting period piece is revealed.
This is Ireland approaching the cusp of major change. The bustling, free-thinking morality of the city is set against the doctrinal Catholicism of rural Ireland. Kate's painful progress through a relationship with an older man mirrors this social and cultural upheaval.
Rita Tushingham brings good energy (and big round eyes) to the role of Kate, and Peter Finch is well cast as the suave, man-of-the-world English writer.
The film is based on an Edna O'Brien novel and the moral territory is familiar from many of her books, but this treatment retains a pleasing freshness and zip.
Beautiful and articulate rites of passage story set in Dublin, about an affair between an inexperienced country girl and a much older and married writer. It's adapted from Edna O'Brien's second novel which was banned in Ireland for its portrayal of adultery and sex, though the film looks extremely tasteful now.
It's about the the youngster's sexual and social awakening,. The commonplace events are deepened by the sensitive performances: Rita Tushingham plays the spirited ingénue brought up in the conservative provinces under the thumb of her crude father and the country priest. Peter Finch is her worldly but inflexible mentor/lover.
There's a witty and exuberant script too. But above all, it's the photography (by Manny Wynn) which excels, shot in a pale monochrome. The sunlight illuminating the well chosen interiors is exquisite. The gorgeous visual style is even more touching than the ill fated romance. Though the b&w means we never see the colour of the jealous girl's eyes!
There is a lively impression of Dublin in the early sixties. And of a teenager caught between city and country, youth and maturity and religion and freedom. Maybe it's incongruous that English actors like Rita and Lynn Redgrave should play Irish women, but their performances are spot on. It's a delicate, detailed, artistic miniature.