FRIENDS

UK, 1972, 104 minutes, Colour.
Sean Bury, Anicee Alvina, Pascale Roberts, Ronald Lewis, Joan Hickson.
Directed by Lewis Gilbert.

Friends was a very lush romantic piece of popular cinema using two young actors, aged about fifteen, and putting them in what looked like a very attractive fairy tale of escape from harsh and unloving homes to a world of love and "marriage", of work, support, pregnancy and birth. The whole thing is made plausible in the plot, although one wonders how successful very many youngsters would or could be in similar circumstances. The realism is more than counterbalanced by shots of sunsets, horses and so on and the beauty of Southern France.

The film ends with the touch of reality coming in on the fairy tale and one wonders where it will all lead to. Perhaps this open-endedness was the only solution possible for such a story.

Lewis Gilbert has directed a variety of films, like Carve Her Name with Pride, Sink the Bismarck, You Only Live Twice, Alfie, The Adventurers. The boy, Sean Bury, was the new boy in if....

1. Was this story realistic or was it a kind of fairy-tale?

2. Did the music and songs contribute to the film?

3. Did the lush colour photography contribute a special atmosphere to the film?

4. Was Michelle's loneliness and the fact that her cousin couldn't care less about her convincingly shown? Did it make her running away plausible?

5. What kind of a boy was Paul? Were his reactions to his father's business preoccupations and second marriage what you might have expected? Did all this (plus the car accident) make his running away plausible?

6. Did the fact of their having one happy day together make their decision to stay away altogether make sense?

7. Were Paul and Michelle typical teenagers in their reactions to things, their maturity, their reactions to one another. their ability to cope. yet their lack of experience?

8. Did they handle the settling into the home, their work, their hunger, their sharing life together well?

9. How was their sexual attraction handled in the film? Was it merely because they were hungry and lonely that they went to bed together? Should they have?

10. What was the significance of their "wedding" - was the director merely saving face or did they truly believe in the value of their marriage?

11. How did they cope with the pregnancy? Were their preparations for the birth and the actual delivery too improbable? What of the baptism sequence?

12. How did the marriage and the parenthood change them both?

13. Were the scenes of the countryside, the sun, water, the horses too romantic, giving a glamorous aura to the whole story and its issues? If it did, did this make the film something of a fraud?

14. The film did not resolve the story or the problems. Was it unable to solve them,, or did it leave the problems with the audience for them to work out their attitudes to the situation?