Rent The Colour Room (2021)

A Silly, Untrue, Feminist Woke Preachy Fantasy of a State-funded British Film which ticks da boxes - The Colour Room review by PV

This could be called THE COLOURBLIND CASTING ROOM - it is absurd and worrying this lie of history is being inflicted on the young.

I have an interest in antiques and this period, and have seen photos of workers from the Potteries then, and reunions of staff who were there with Clarice Cliff and there is NO ONE black face. And yet here, there are black women called Vera, Gladys Elsie and Betty, and black men working the kilns. Honestly, GET REAL! Get a grip. This is our British history, a real story about real people and they were not black!

It is as absurd as casting 'white' European actors as Zulu warriors or Aborigines, or maybe heroes of South Africa. Colourblind casting is such nonsense - this is REAL HISTORY and REAL EVENTS not fantasy. Cast accurately, Does it matter? YES. It matters a lot. HOW WOULD Asians or Africans like it is white actors were cast to play their historical figures of the past? See how Egyptians now are triggered by woke Netflix casting a black actress as Cleopatra (she was Greek and clearly not black - look at her image on coins).

FYI there were just 6000 black people of the whole UK population in 1939. Less in the 1920s. And none working with Cliff in Stoke on Trent in the 1920s and 30s. Not a one.

This feminist tickbox preachy metoo movies shows Clarice Cliff as Wonderwoman, in effect - erroneously claims she invented ART DECO (named in France in 1925), and colourful pottery designs, as well as marketing to women and modern business techniques. WHAT ROT! Colourful Art Deco designs were popular post the First World War in France and Holland, and Cliff took her influence from there. Yes, she achieved but steady on! She did NOT invent anything or create ART DECO or colourful designs of the 1920s and 30s. Gouda pottery (PZH) was doing colourful bowls and vases from 1918.

She also married her boss, in 1940, something left out here.

fact is, this s a very flimsy story and not enough to sustain a feature film SO the female writer and female director unfortunately make it into a metoo movie, a feminist fantasy propaganda piece in which of course a lobe heroic woman has to overcome obstacles, sexism, and awful silly sexist nastywasty men to finally succeed. Actually men enabled her career and she married the boss! This fantasy feminist film portrays Clarice Cliff as WONDERWOMAN and is about as realistic.

There were MANY women working in ceramics - in Stoke and Worcester and Swansea and other potteries. AND some women worked in design and some men worked in painting and decorating pots and plates (Worcester has many famous male artists). This who feminist pity party is CONSTRUCTED. Just like the colourblind casting mess fantasy. Fact is, BUSINESS cares about BUSINESS - making profit, It does not care about the sex /gender of anyone who enables that (or the skin colour).

I would rather see a film about the WHOLE potteries story - Wedgewood needs a movie and the whole history of porcelain whose secret recipe and process was jealously guarded by the Chinese. Now THAT would be a story. There is just not enough here to make a feature - not even a biopic.

I wish this film had been made a decade or two ago, before wokery and metoo tickbox agendas infected the film industry,

And it may have been better as a TV series, with a drama about the WHOLE Art Deco period of the 20s and 30s. I would watch that.

A wasted opportunity, 1,5 stars rounded up. I cannot fault the acting though the main character actress is way too Wonderwoman for the real world!