Not too long after I watched A Taste of Honey, I checked out Pauline Kael's review of the film. As with other things, she had her issues, and I could see her points on one matter - that the symbolism of working-class people going to an amusement park, whether it makes for a fun or not so fun time, is a little tired, even for 1961, as a place of the rare distraction/escape from their humdrum, miserable existences - but I'm not sure if she was completely fair when she categorized as if this was a) a film that people would see as an art-house type of experience where we're meant to see someone to look down upon (as opposed to Hollywood fare where, somehow for some, they're people to look up to or heroic or aspire to be), and b) that Tony Richardson made Manchester's industrial locations look like sets. But on the other hand, she wrote her review around the time the film came out, so in a sense her reaction is now as dated as the film is, or might be. No, it is.
It's not exactly the movie's fault but, actually this is good news, times have changed, at least somewhat. At the time if a teenage girl, just done with school, came home and told her mom she was knocked up with a black baby in the West of America or England, well, that puts up a red flag right away (also it's not clear to me if she drops out or actually finishes, but no matter, she either seems under-educated or isn't too intellectually curious really in this working-class, frankly poor existence). Adding to this, young Jo (the wonderful Rita Tushingham, the Anna Karina of the British New Wave, if not as cool then goofier and more raw in her emotions as a performer), decides to leave her mother, who happened to also have Jo at a too-young age (this never seems to occur to Jo as what makes up her mother's character, which is an interesting in-between the lines sort of thing dramatically), and shacks up with Geoffrey (Murray Melvin, remember him in Barry Lyndon?) who is gay but damn if he'll ever come out and say it.
Everything here is presented with the utmost realism that's possible, albeit there's still a musical score that adds some whimsy, and Richardson does (as Kael also noted in her review) relies in a lot of close-ups to try to get his effect of drama, and perhaps that's too much. But I was always fascinated by this character Jo even when, somehow, she should or could get on my nerves; when she is upset at someone, such as her mother or Melvyn or the (definitely worst) drunk husband that mother Helen marries, she doesn't shy from showing how she feels. But everyone else can dish it out as well as they can take it, or, more precisely, they have to because this is the sort of emotionally heightened state things are at. In a way it reminded me of how some/a lot of the characters are in something like Mean Streets or Do the Right Thing: sometimes you are kind of ACTING out or seeming to be more upset or more BIG in responses or attitudes than you actually are, and Jo is that.
So while it should've been difficult, I felt sympathy and even some empathy for her; what does one do if one doesn't have the emotional or intellectual intelligence, and yet there *is* a basic human decency, to live and be in the world? This is based on a play, and I'd be curious how that went (I imagine a lot takes place in Jo's run-down apartment, sans the noisy kids outside always playing, sort of making this into a place where there's always a constant reminder of innocence amid the rubble and run-down locale). If Richardson doesn't fully elevate the material, and that may be the biggest mark I'd make of it, albeit there are some creative shots here and there (i.e. Jo standing in a wide tunnel that emphasizes her solitude and alone-ness even as she's with Melvyn), then he doesn't get in its way too much to make it not impactful, if that makes sense.
If you watch A Taste of Honey, you may realize that what was fully groundbreaking and 'wow I've *never* seen this before' isn't so in 2017 - again, a good sign, that we can at least try to move on from what was breaking taboos for the period - but it's the dialog and the performances, especially from Tushingham and Dora Bryan - that make this still worth watching today. While you can't fully take apart how meaningful it was and still is, dealing with black and gay characters shown simply *as is*, the nuts and bolts of a drama, how characters talk and emote, is what counts too.
