Movie Review: Misbehaviour

 Movie: Misbehaviour

Stars: 4

Ever a sucker for an English film, I've been chomping at the bit to see this one for a while, COVID closing the cinemas and delaying it's release date. Besides, it has some of my favourite actors in it - Jessie Buckley, Keira Knighley, Lesley Manville, Greg Kinnear and Rhys Ifans to name a few. 

The film looks at the start of the Women's Liberation movement in England in the late sixties. There are a  number of threads all based on real events. 

Sally (Keira Knighley) is a strong-willed woman wanting to resume her university education. A divorced mother of one, she is looked down on for her choices. 

Jo (Jessie Buckley) and her rag-tag crew are hell bent on fucking the patriarchy and are very demonstrative about it, doing many acts of low grade civil disobedience to get their point across - which is how Sally and Jo meet. 

In the background, the Miss World Competition is starting its preparations. Mr and Mrs Morley (A wonderful performance by Rhys Ifans and Keeley Hawes) are in charge of the pageant, arranging a declining Bob Hope (Greg Kinnear and a startling nasal prosthetic) and navigating the changing world at large. To overcome the escalating mood over apartheid, South Africa has two entrants. The white, Miss South Africa, and the black, Miss Africa South (Loreece Harrison). Miss Grenada (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is stoic in the fact of the fact that no woman of colour has won the Miss World Contest to date. 

Jo, Sally and their crew of women's libbers take it upon themselves to disrupt the contest - an event which was televised life to the world. 

And that is pretty much the film. 

There's a lot to unpack here. Fifty years on from the events we can see how far we've come - and how far we have to go. There are a lot of uncomfortable and disquieting moments and characters and situations are juxtaposed. What used to be seen as family entertainment in the seventies, is barely acknowledged in the mainstream now. The mix of gender politics with the growing denouncing of apartheid still rankles. Where Jo and her women's libbers were once seen as the lunatic fringe, women's equality is far more mainstream. 

But it had to start somewhere, and this was one of the flashpoints.

This is not a perfect movie, but there is a lot of good in here, and plenty of entertainment to be had. There's a great energy to the film and some great performances. Lesley Manville stands out as Dolores Hope, Bob's long suffering wife. As a feminist, the desire to slap Bob Hope and Mr Morley was almost visceral. Kinnear and Ifans do their job well. 

The costumes and sets are also extraordinary, capturing the zeitgeist and feel of London in the early seventies. 

Misbehaviour is definitely worth a look for the diversion. 

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