Themes: Teen Pregnancy, Expecting a Baby, Kids in Trouble
Main Cast: Emily Lloyd, Tom Bell, Clare Clifford, Barbara Durkin, Geoffrey Hutchings
Release Year: 1987
Country: UK/BE
Run Time: 92 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
The British Wish You Were Here served as the auspicious film debut for 16-year-old Emily Lloyd. The scene is a British seaside community of the 1950s, where the local adults are shocked and embarrassed by the libertine Lynda (Lloyd), who dresses provocatively, behaves outrageously, and swears like a sailor (her favorite epithet is "Up your bum"). Lynda's mother is dead, and her father has given up trying to do anything with her. She attempts to hold down several jobs, but messes them all up through insolence and carelessness. Excessively promiscuous, Lynda has an affair with a middle-aged friend of her father's. She becomes pregnant, only to use her "fallen" state to gleefully shock and annoy her elders even more. Despite her bravado, there's an underlying sadness about Lynda: the title Wish You Were Here refers to her feelings concerning her late mother. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Director David Leland's valentine to sexual candor is most notable for introducing the bright, unaffected young actress Emily Lloyd. Lloyd's uninhibited, motherless Lynda is coy and sprightly without ever resorting to hapless, sex-kitten posing. Despite the nature of the material -- the script was based on the adolescence of notorious English madam Cynthia Payne -- Leland never uses Lloyd as a mere object of desire. The sex scenes are mostly rendered in objective long shot, as it becomes obvious that the film is as much about the sexual hangups of men as it is about the relative "promiscuity" of a teenage girl. In this respect, Wish You Were Here is a fine companion to Martha Coolidge's Rambling Rose (1991): both films recognize the need for sexual curiosity and experimentation in young women, despite the consternation that they might receive from hypocritical, repressed partners. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Charlotte Barker - Gillian; Jesse Birdsall - Dave; Chloe Leland - Margaret; Trudy Cavanagh - Tap Dancing Lady; Charlotte Ball - Lynda, Age 11; Pamela Duncan - Mrs. Hartley; Geoffrey Durham - Harry Figgis; Georgi Vasilyev - Mitch The Dog; David Hatton - Shop Van Customer; Pat Heywood - Aunt Millie; Barrie Houghton - Cafe Manager; Sheila Kelley - Joan Figgis; Susan Skipper - Lynda's Mother; Neville Smith - Cinema Manager; Marjorie Sudell - Lady with Hurt Knee; Lee Whitlock - Brian; Heathcote Williams - Dr. Holroyd; Jim Dowdall - Cook; Ben Daniels - Policeman; Bob Flag - Mental Patient; Frederick Hall - Passenger with Umbrella; William Lawford - Uncle Brian; Kim McDermott - Vickie; Val McLane - Maisie Mathews; Danielle Phelps - The Baby
Credit
Nigel Phelps - Art Director, Susie Figgis - Casting, Shuna Harwood - Costume Designer, David Leland - Director, George Akers - Editor, Stanley Myers - Composer (Music Score), Jenny Shircore - Makeup, Caroline Amies - Production Designer, Ian Wilson - Cinematographer, Sarah Radclyffe - Producer, Jim Dowdall - Stunts, David Leland - Screenwriter
16-year-old Lynda Mansell (Emily Lloyd) lives in a small English seaside town in the early 1950s. She is feisty and precocious and always shocks other people with her vulgar and saucy tongue (her favorite insult is "Up yer bum"). Bored with conventional jobs (which she frequently loses) and her town's dull young men, Lynda has her first sexual experience with Dave (Jesse Birdsall) but after she has slept with one of her father's middle-aged friends (Tom Bell), her life changes. She becomes pregnant and her father, a somewhat rigid and conventional man, disowns her. Desperately she tries to seek an illegal abortion but in the end decides to become a mother.
Wish you were here is a sigh Lynda makes because of her dead mother, who understood her and protected her from her intolerant father. Beneath her cheeky exterior, Lynda is a vulnerable girl who seeks love and a place in life; she lives in a time where it was difficult for teenagers like her to do that in their own way.
