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Annette Whiteley in GIRL ON APPROVAL Year: 1962 |
If you didn't know the plot going in... that fourteen-year-old Sheila is an unwanted orphan who'd gone through a string of foster parents and is now "trying out for" a couple that could be her very last chance... she'd seem like any other girl her age: Bratty. Moody. Angry. Pouting. Shouting... Favoring friendly dad over competitive mom...
Basically, GIRL ON APPROVAL is about a normal bad girl at this age, and yet the plot (more a situation) adds enough suspense for the outcome to matter, but not only for the kid...
Parents Rachel Roberts and James Maxwell, who'd lost their daughter and, raising two young boys, wind up at each other's throat when this bad seed makes their domestic suburban life a living hell. From cutting up furniture with scissors to smashing things on the kitchen floor, the acting of young Annette Whiteley is strong and effective if one-note-grouchy: like an owl peaking through a messy nest of hair...
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Annette Whiteley in GIRL ON APPROVAL Rates: **** |
And yet, while not a classic beauty, she's quirky-cute, and in one "street walking" sequence, you can not only clearly foretell her life's possible future, but what risque direction this movie could have gone with the young actress perfectly suited for that unrealized transition...
So everything is up to the parents (initially "hired" by civil servant Ellen McIntosh); and with Rachel Roberts in the leading adult role there's a good stir of drama and melodrama; the difference being whatever seems more like the American "Afterschool Special" ten years later... Which is just the point of the British New Wave: No matter what the subject, they're at least a decade ahead.
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Ellen McIntosh & Annette Whiteley in GIRL ON APPROVAL |
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Annette Whiteley in GIRL ON APPROVAL |
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Annette Whiteley in GIRL ON APPROVAL |
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Annette Whiteley in GIRL ON APPROVAL |
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Ellen McIntosh & Annette Whiteley in GIRL ON APPROVAL |
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Annette Whiteley in GIRL ON APPROVAL |
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Rachel Roberts & Annette Whiteley in GIRL ON APPROVAL |
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Annette Whiteley in GIRL ON APPROVAL |
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Annette Whiteley in GIRL ON APPROVAL |
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Rachel Roberts & Annette Whiteley in GIRL ON APPROVAL with James Maxwell |
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Rachel Roberts & Annette Whiteley in GIRL ON APPROVAL with James Maxwell |
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Rachel Roberts & Annette Whiteley in GIRL ON APPROVAL |
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Annette Whiteley in GIRL ON APPROVAL |
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Annette Whiteley in GIRL ON APPROVAL |
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