The L-Shaped Room (1962)

Directed by

Bryan Forbes

Genre

drama film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

2h 03m

Rating

6.8 of 10 from 41 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A young unmarried French woman who is pregnant rents a cheap room in a London boarding house. She befriends a young man who lives there while navigating the judgment of those around her.

melancholicwistfulgroundedsympatheticnaturalisticslow-burnintimatepoignant

What happens

The L-Shaped Room is a 1962 British drama romance film written and directed by Bryan Forbes, based on the 1960 novel by Lynne Reid Banks. It tells the story of Jane Fosset, a young French woman, unmarried and pregnant, who moves into a cheap London boarding house, befriending a young man, Toby, in the building. The work is considered part of the kitchen sink realism school of British drama. The film reflected a trend in British films of greater frankness about sex and displays a sympathetic treatment of outsiders "unmarried mothers, lesbian or black" as well as a "largely natural and non-judgmental handling of their problems". As director, Forbes represents "a more romantic, wistful type of realism" than that of Tony Richardson or Lindsay Anderson. Leslie Caron's performance earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress, as well as a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Cicely Courtneidge gave what she considered her finest film performance, in a role wholly unlike her usual parts; she played Mavis, an elderly lesbian, living in a drab London flat with her cat, recalling her career as an actress and forlornly trying to keep in touch with former friends. The Times described her performance as a triumph. For Tom Bell, the film marked his breakthrough as a leading actor in film and television. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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