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*** This review may contain spoilers ***
SPOILERS INCLUDED The Groupie scene- a headline making 'problem' in the late Sixties- seems to have inspired a fairly nasty and mean-spirited reaction from British filmmaking, at least if this and Derek Ford's Groupie Girl are anything to go by. In spite of baring as much teenage flesh as possible, both Groupie Girl and Permissive adopt the stance of sad, downbeat, would be morality tales of runaways who come to London looking for adventure as groupies but only end up being used, abused and 'damaged'. Even Val Guest's Au Pair Girls (1972), essentially a mini-skirt wiggling 'swinging comedy' stops the fun dead when a naïve star-struck virgin is deflowered then cruelly tossed aside by a famous rock star. For an audience of middle-aged men these sexploiters also probably carried the too close-to-home realisation that that girl on screen with no clothes on messing around with rock stars- could be your daughter.Permissive, under the direction of Canadian Lindsay Shonteff, eschews a straightforward narrative in favour of an almost documentary approach. There's unique flash forward editing, proto-music video sections and scenes of rockers and groupies huddled into cramp, dingy rooms that are shot in a 'fly on the wall' fashion. Into this world comes Suzy (Maggie Stride), a non-descript ugly duckling who trades in her country life and duffle-coat for becoming a groupie and being sleazed after by rock group hangers-on and bands like Forever More whose lead singer wouldn't be out of place sitting at the end of someone's garden with a fishing rod. But the London rock scene is no place to make friends- it's the sort of world where the wrong word to the wrong man can have you kicked out onto the streets by an irate girlfriend, where a prune faced road manager (Shonteff regular Gilbert Wynne) sleeps with girls then violently ejects them from the digs the next morning, and where the groupies themselves are always ready to dispense to each other a slap in the face or a knife in the back ('If I had tits like yours I wouldn't flash em about' snipes one girl wearing junkie dark glasses).Suzy is temporally taken under the wing of Fiona (Gay Singleton), an old school-friend who's shacked up with Forever More's lead singer. But when the band hits the road, Suzy gets left behind to fend for herself. As in the Ford film solace comes in the form of a folk singer who Suzy first meets at a backstage party and then runs into begging in Piccadilly Circus, but 'Pogo' (Robert Daubigny) turns out to be an unbalanced individual prone to dragging Suzy into churches and delivering his own screaming sermons until the police show up. Later Pogo and Suzy are making their way across town when out of the blue he's hit and killed by a car. His death though coincides with Forever More rolling back into town, Suzy rejoins the groupie scene a more hard and manipulating character. After enduring more than her fair share of miserable luck, Suzy finally beds Forever More's lead singer and a neglected Fiona reacts to the situation by slitting her wrists in the bathroom. Discovering her one time friend drenched in blood and slowly expiring in the bath, Suzy takes one last emotionless stare into her predecessor's eyes before leaving her to die, providing the film with its characteristically bleak and tragic parting shot.Permissive is partly a vehicle for Forever More, who play the band in the film and whose songs ('Beautiful Afternoon' 'Good to Me' 'We Sing') provide a running commentary on the action. A real life band who cut two LPs for RCA, the reasons for Forever More's involvement in Permissive remain a question mark. However it's fair to say their reputations as musicians (or actors) probably wasn't greatly enhanced by their appearance here. Lets face it have you ever heard of Forever More? Maybe the idea of being in close proximity to sexploitation novelty act the Collinson twins and top models of the day like Nicola Austine and (in her last known role) Maria Frost, was too much of a temptation for these hairy individuals. Coming across in the film as having limited talent and equally limited money its unlikely Forever More would have been much of a desirable prospect to any of these women in real life!Shonteff, a Jack-of-all-Genres who began his career with cut-price chillers like Devil Doll and The Curse of Simba, shot Permissive very much as a hired gun. Tigon were looking for the second feature to their ménage-a-trois drama 'Monique' to be based around the groupie scene. Duly Shonteff typed off a script (known at various stages as Suzy Superscrew, The Now Generation and The 'X' Project) and brought the film in for less than £20,000. In a far cry from the sight gags that litter his silly spy spoofs like Licensed to Love and Kill, Shonteff maintains a deliberately squalid tone throughout the film. Shots of people having sex on toilets and cruelly funny lines like `I thought he was marvellous till he left me lying on the floor' pretty much sum the proceedings up. In the world of Permissive the groupie scene is as cold and miserable an experience as wandering around London streets at night or sitting on park benches- two of the film's most reoccurring images. Three decades later, Forever More's warblings and an absence of likeable characters have left a film without much appeal outside of period authenticity. A less glamorous view of life on the road, though, is hard to imagine.
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