Sarah Douglas is a model married to urbane, upper middle class Julian Glover, who also happens to beat her up at seemingly arbitrary intervals (the film opens with him waking her up from a deep sleep by beating her with a belt). She thinks he needs therapy, but when he refuses and his behavior becomes increasingly erratic, she leaves him and takes refuge in the flat of her photographer friend Bruce Robinson (yeah, the writer/director of "Withnail and I") and his girlfriend.
This is a really strange film. On the one hand, it seems to be a fairly well-meaning depiction of spousal abuse focusing on the difficulty women have dealing with police and a court system that's stacked against them. Glover is a fairly crazy and outrageous example of a domestic abuser (at one point he suddenly puts on her clothes and chases her, and he later tries to brand her), but the film also depicts a working class couple with an abusive husband who is far from outrageous and really disturbing in his casual violence. The film uses this second couple to highlight that while Douglas has a lot of resources and can leave fairly easily, many women do not have this luxury.
But ... this film is also a sexploitation film. There's a truly heroic amount of nudity in this film and some moderately explicit sex scenes, a lot of this involves Douglas. (When Douglas is fleeing the initial assault in, her breasts tumble out of her nightgown)
Speaking charitably, this film was made during a particularly difficult period in the British film industry, so I'm pretty sure that the sex angle was needed to sell a film with a particularly difficult subject matter (one not really dealt with yet in American films). Still, it makes for a pretty odd and discordant experience.
This is a really strange film. On the one hand, it seems to be a fairly well-meaning depiction of spousal abuse focusing on the difficulty women have dealing with police and a court system that's stacked against them. Glover is a fairly crazy and outrageous example of a domestic abuser (at one point he suddenly puts on her clothes and chases her, and he later tries to brand her), but the film also depicts a working class couple with an abusive husband who is far from outrageous and really disturbing in his casual violence. The film uses this second couple to highlight that while Douglas has a lot of resources and can leave fairly easily, many women do not have this luxury.
But ... this film is also a sexploitation film. There's a truly heroic amount of nudity in this film and some moderately explicit sex scenes, a lot of this involves Douglas. (When Douglas is fleeing the initial assault in, her breasts tumble out of her nightgown)
Speaking charitably, this film was made during a particularly difficult period in the British film industry, so I'm pretty sure that the sex angle was needed to sell a film with a particularly difficult subject matter (one not really dealt with yet in American films). Still, it makes for a pretty odd and discordant experience.