It's a timely coincidence that my exploration of British Free Cinema generally referred to as 'kitchen sink' dramas made me discover "A Taste of Honey" right during Pride month.
From my preliminary reading about the synopsis I was expecting a sort of docu-drama about unexpected teenage pregnancy in patriarcal times but I missed an important clue: the original successful play (many British classics derive from plays anyway) was written by Shelagh Delaney when she was 18, which means with no agenda or narrative requirements, only the free inspiration from a young woman in the budding of her independence.
Born in 1938, she literally served as a bridge between the lost generation and the baby-boomers who -at the film's release- were teenagers, and before the Beatles would infuse their exuberant adult-defying insouciance through in "A Hard Day's Night", before Tom Courtenay would be the spokesperson of angry youth as a liar and a long-distance runner, it was Rita Tushingham as Jo, the tough pint-sized tom-boy-like brunette with gigantic expressive blue eyes who let her anger implode with particles of joy and devil-may-care detachment spilled all over the black-and-white screen. And let me say that after so many "young angry men" films, I'm pleased and not the least surprised that it was the woman's one to introduce so many milestones one would easily lose the track.
Josephine, aka Jo, is a 19-year old girl, raised by a single mother specialized in the oldest profession, she's played by a delightful and almost endearing Dory Bryan and that Jo calls her Helen is a little taboo-breaking detail. Obviously, Jo was an accident but Helen -if not the looks of her fading youth- still got the heart and is far from the abusive type. To put it straight, if you expect stereotypes in that film you have another thing coming. It's not even the most publicized aspect of the story but there's the romance with Jimmy, a Black sailor played by Paul Danquah; they love each other, their interactions are sincere, and so we're never left with the feeling that he 'abandoned' her, neither is Jo. And Richardson doesn't let us interpret Jo's open-mindedness the wrong way, no she didn't like Jimmy for rebellion's sake, but simply because she liked him... her feelings precede her choices no matter what.
There's just too much modernity to handle in the film that I don't even feel like praising the artistic aspect. What for? All right, it's the first British shot on locations and to enhance the realism of the story, Richardson gratifies with details of the street life in England, a day at the carnival where you can see people barely noticing the actors, shots on rivers, docks, shabby houses: the realism feels real. But any passable director can get the right shots in and just let the camera roll when you've got the right settings. However, what Richardson does and in my opinion better than his next film "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner" is to show a certain truth in his characters by depriving them from any narrative guidance.
Tushingham brings a quirky freshness and spontaneity switching from joy to anger to sheer confusion in a way that yet never confuses us, she argues a lot with Helen but it's never played for melodrama, as the mothers points it out "we enjoy it" and it's true that these characters never seem to have clear ideas of what they're doing but somehow we understand them. I think I understood that it was inevitable that a girl like Jo would be immune to the traditional expectations: she's like the male counterpart of Albert Finney's character in "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", the man who made a married woman pregnant and could left her for a younger gal. But Jo might be an angry young woman but she's no victim and she's braver, embracing her pregnancy as a fact, not a punishment, only a link to a chain of events that form the path of her life. She deals with it without any hatred or desire of revenge against men.
The film doesn't shame men but establish two male figures that couldn't have been more opposite: there's Helen's husband (Robert Stephens) who's the perfect macho and with his mustache looks like an alpha-male version of Walt Disney, ordering her do the laundry, drinking, flirting, belittling and blackmailing her; and there's Geoff, Murray Melvin as the homosexual who never hid his identity, suspecting that she wouldn't reject her. Her first reaction is curiosity but they quickly become roommates and friends and it goes as far as Geoff proposing to be the father for the child's sake, he does love Jo and that says something about his true need for tenderness and a recognition of being. Murray brings a total naturalness in that man not afraid to be who is and with his long face, owl-like eyes and aquiline nose that reminded me of a young Jean Rochefort, he's got the awkward charm of an effeminate man still proud enough to hide his inner sensibility.
Now, "A Taste of Honey" has no pretension to teach a lesson, but only to show people entrapped in their social conditions and forced to be characters rather than people, Helen wants to believe that she's young enough to attract men, to satisfy her ego, Jo wants to be a good mother but is afraid her child might inherit some traits from her father and there's Geoff who is who he is and yet tries to find a semblance of 'normality' that can englobe his own lifestyle choices ...... Maybe the closest to a bitter taste to that "honey" is that the reality of the world is too much to handle and it's sad to see these free people becoming characters again, as if they ended up thinking "who are we kidding?".
Still, on the film's 60th birthday, one should applaud the extraordinary performers, the gutsy director and the visionary Shelagh Delaney.
