Misbehaviour: Review

There's a lot to like about Phillipa Gregory's Misbehaviour. It's entertaining, makes you cringe at the right times and left me in tears at the end (I don't know if it's lockdown getting to my head but that seems to be an increasingly easy task).

However, my mum and I came away from the film with two different opinions and I thought it'd be quite interesting to explore that argument here. Don't get me wrong we both enjoyed the film but while I was ready to sing its praises my mum was left underwhelmed. She hadn't connected with any of the women's libers and was annoyed at how clean everything looked. The commune where a lot of the women lived, the clothes, the hair. The overall lack of 1970's grit really irritated her in a way which I just couldn't understand. It is, after-all, a movie not a documentary and a highly dramatised, condensed version of events at that.

I think her main argument is that the medium should match the message. This story of rebellion and going against the status quo shouldn't look as mainstream as Misbehaviour does and shouldn't look as middle-class either. At the beginning of the film Keira Knightley's character Sally is asked if she wants to bring down the Patriarchy or if she "just wants a seat at the table". While this is a story about being rebellious the films format is anything but! Trying to fit in amongst the other slick costume dramas listed next to it on streaming services.

While I understand this point I must admit that while watching it I never really got a sense that it was too clean. Sally is a middle class character and after having that established I didn't question the production design. We didn't spend enough time in the commune for me to register it as being too clean. We're either in close up while the women are painting and stamping their posters or upstairs where room's been cleared for their meetings. Even if the production designers had sprinkled some debris around the place I'm not sure how much of it we'd see.

I thought the hair and clothing of the women were pretty understated even though it has been pointed out to me I wasn't alive back then (then again my mother was only just alive herself and definitely won't have remembered it). The one point I will agree with is that it would have been nice to see some of the women's lives around the commune, see them as mothers and workers so we know what they've got to loose. All we really get is a look into Sally's world but we can hardly blame this true story for focusing on a real woman who was really there and I thought the conflict between Sally and her mother added an interesting layer to her character.

Maybe it would have worked better if Jo had been our main character but my guess is that Sally, being from a higher class and a place at Oxford, has further to fall if it all goes wrong and therefore there is more conflict and drama in making her one of the main characters.

Of course the main reason why the other women have been sidelined is time. And when a film is already striking a difficult balance between two very important events it makes sense for it to be kept simple to prevent the film from getting too convoluted or reducing the time spent with a main character that I personally didn't think we spent enough time with anyway.

If Misbehaviour was a film solely about Miss Grenada then all the choices made in direction, cinematography, lighting and production design would have made total sense in my opinion.

This film is the elegant, stylized tribute she deserves, a gritier look would not have shown the world she inhabits during the film and would not have reflected her own view of what she does.

Many critics have been quick to point out the dismissal of sexual misconduct by the men in the film. While mentioned every now and then we don't see any evidence of this. My reasoning is that a subject like that needs its own film and it will be a very different film. Issues like sexual assault can not be a side story simply because it is too important a topic to not be given the films full attention. The women's liberation front are not there to rescue the contestants. An important detail yes but this is not that story.

Also for Miss Grenada's story we need to focus on Miss Grenada. Gugu is one of the standout performances of the film. Her performance conveys her intelligence and sense of pride which even the demeaning nature of the Miss World competition can't break. I often found myself wanting to know more about her and spend more time with her character.

One of the main problems I had with the film was the amount of time we spent with the men of Miss World. While I understand this whole crazy parade needs context I found their stories chewing into time we should be spending with Miss Grenada or the Women's Libers. Their clownish, slimey portrayals, while accurate, didn't tell me anything I didn't already know about the kind of men who run these competitions. The protest and the first black winner of the Miss World competition was a new story to me and much more important.

In conclusion while I understand my mother's frustration at the lack of grit and realism for the women's libbers I can't extend that to the story of Miss Grenada. Personally I felt all the performances were good and while there may be two very interesting feature films trying to get out of this condensed 1 hour 46 version, I felt that the balance was handled reasonably well and the fact these two events happened on the same night is what makes this story so interesting and extraordinary.

Whether you enjoyed it or not there is no doubt a conversation to be had after watching it.

Far from perfect but a good film nevertheless.

6/10