Intimate Reflections is a 1975 British independent drama film directed by Don Boyd and starring Anton Rodgers, Lillias Walker, Sally Anne Newton and Jonathan David.[1] It was Boyd’s first feature film and premiered at the 1975 London Film Festival.[2][3] Boyd described it as a study both of sexual infidelity and the clash between youth and middle-age.[4]
Plot
Robert and Jane are a middle-aged couple grieving over a dead daughter. Michael and Zonny are a young couple with a bright future ahead of them. The film dwells on their parallel lives.
Cast
- Anton Rodgers as Michael White
- Lillias Walker as Zonny
- Sally Anne Newton as Jane
- Jonathan David as Robert
- Peter Vaughan as salesman
- Derek Bond as bank manager
Production
Boyd had hoped to interest British Lion in the film as a ‘British Emanuelle‘ but in the event they backed out, branding it as ‘very specialised fare’, although Michael Deeley did lend Boyd £500 to take it to the States and tart it around as his ‘calling card’.[4]
Reception
The film attracted little attention outside the 1975 London Film Festival and its limited theatrical release in the UK.[5]
The Observer called it “fatuously arty.”[6] The Sunday Telegraph reviewer wrote “I wish I could like Intimate Relations more than I do.”[7] Evening Standard felt “bits of [the film] which are good to very good… well worth a look.”[8] The Daily Telegraph felt it was “not quite successful.”[9]
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: “A virtual anthology of false ‘good’ ideas rendered in a thrice-told arts-and-crafts manner of endless replays, the film cannot even take up a relatively modest notion or conceit … without driving it into the ground.”[10]
Time Out (New York) wrote: “Surely the worst film of the year … no amount of special pleading, bonhomie towards experiment, or explanation of motive can hide the fact that the result is like a synthesis of every bad detail of every bad undergraduate film you’ve ever seen.”[11]
References
- ^ “Intimate Reflections”. British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 10 January 2025.
- ^ “London Film Festival 1975”. BFI database. Archived from the original on 14 January 2009. Retrieved 21 March 2011.
- ^ “Intimate Reflections”. BFI database. Archived from the original on 17 January 2009. Retrieved 21 March 2011.
- ^ a b Walker, Alexander (September 2005) [1985]. National Heroes: British Cinema in the 70’s and 80’s. Orion. ISBN 0-7528-5707-X.
- ^ Malcom, Derek (31 March 1979). “Phoenix of our film industry”. The Guardian. p. 12.
- ^ “The doomed diggers”. The Observer. 16 November 1975. p. 30.
- ^ “A little Liszt”. Sunday Telegraph. 16 November 1975. p. 16.
- ^ Walker, Alexander (20 November 1975). “Shorts… and nearly all sweet”. Evening Standard. p. 19.
- ^ “Whimsy and warning”. The Daily Telegraph. 14 November 1975. p. 13.
- ^ “Intimate Reflections”. The Monthly Film Bulletin. Vol. 42, no. 492. 1 January 1975. p. 239. ProQuest 1305831079.
- ^ “Intimate Reflections”. Time Out (New York). Retrieved 21 March 2011.
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