Misbehavior (2020)

Directed by: Philippa Lowthorpe | 107 minutes | drama, comedy | Actors: Keira Knightley, Greg Kinnear, Daniel Tiplady, Kajsa Mohammar, Stephen Boxer, Justin Salinger, Jessie Buckley, Ruby Bentall, Lily Newmark, Maya Kelly, John Heffernan, Jo Herbert, Rhys Ifans, Keeley Hawes, Ed Eales White, Jonathan Rhodes Lesley Manville, Eileen O’Higgins, Laurel Lefkow, Amanda Lawrence, Samuel Blenkin, Nicholas Nun, Phyllis Logan, Robert Irons, Alexa Davies, Jojo Macari, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Loreece Harrison, Suki Waterhouse, Clara Rosager

Eric Morley and his wife Julia had been organizing beauty pageants for nearly twenty years when, in 1970, the women’s rights movement suddenly took off and dismissed Miss World as an ordinary meat show. Before that, the event was a festive occasion, with millions of families waiting at the viewing tube to marvel at the beautiful ladies with a snack and a drink. But is such an election just ordinary family entertainment or a misogynistic ‘cattle market’ maintained by the patriarchal society? At the end of the sixties, when many protest movements made their mark, the women’s movement also rose, demanding equal rights and the right to self-determination (‘boss in your own belly’). In the Miss World pageant of 1970, which they maligned, they saw an ideal (media) moment to make themselves known. Armed with stink bombs, flour bombs, water pistols and banners, they disrupted the event to deliver their feminist message live to millions of people around the world.

This event is at the heart of British Philippa Lowthorpe’s historical tragicomedy ‘Misbehaviour’ (2020), best known for her award-winning series ‘Three Girls’ and ‘Call the Midwife’. She hangs her story on three young, combative women who each try to gain a better position in their own way. Sally Alexander (Keira Knightley) is a bright, ambitious, divorced mother who has set her sights on a history degree at University College London, but is met with much resistance from the university establishment (which consists exclusively of white, middle-aged men). or older). Her intention to write a dissertation on women in the labor movement is brushed aside as being uninteresting and too marginal. But Sally won’t let herself be pushed aside. Her encounter with the anarchist Jo Robinson (Jessie Buckley) makes her dare to let go of her brakes and take a firmer grip on her feminist struggle. Jennifer Hosten (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who is participating in the beauty pageant on behalf of the Caribbean island of Grenada, proves that there is also another battle. She sees this as the opportunity to demonstrate that women of color can just as easily be crowned the world’s most beautiful.

While themes like racism, feminism and anarchy are pretty solid, in ‘Misbehaviour’ these are served in a very light-hearted way. The advantage of this approach is that the film looks away very quickly and never becomes too heavy, the disadvantage is that it all remains on the surface. We actually jump from one scene to the next without really going into depth, but because the cast is very strong, ‘Misbehaviour’ gets away with it. Knightley is solid as always, the great Buckley actually gets just too little to do but does splash off the screen and Mbatha-Raw steals the show as the thoughtful Hosten, who actually won the 1970 election but whose victory was quite controversial ( the film only hints at this slightly). The film’s climax is the seemingly spontaneous, emotionally charged encounter of Sally and Jennifer in the toilet, where they discover that they have more in common than they initially thought and develop a greater understanding of each other.

Unfortunately, this is the only scene that really touches you, although ‘Misbehaviour’ never gets boring. Thanks in part to wonderful supporting roles by, among others, Rhys Ifans, Keeley Hawes (as Mr. and Mrs. Morley) and Greg Kinnear, who plays Bob Hope very aptly. Hope, the notorious smuggler and lover of feminine beauty, was invited to spice up the Miss World pageant with his painfully misogynistic jokes. The always fantastic Lesley Manville plays his wife Dolores, who has left the bitterness phase for a while and is now fully engaged in sarcasm mode. The film also looks immaculate down to the last detail – with such a nice nostalgic touch that only the British can actually achieve. And even though this film doesn’t dig deep, when you are confronted at the end of the film with the real protagonists of this event, you still go for the axe.