Wish You Were Here (1987)

• Year: 1987
• Released: 24 Jul 1987
• Country: United Kingdom
• Adwords: Won 1 BAFTA Award6 wins & 4 nominations total
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094331/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wish_you_were_here
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: R
• Genre: Comedy, Drama
• Runtime: 88 min
• Writer: David Leland
• Director: David Leland
• Cast: Emily Lloyd, Trudi Cavanagh, Clare Clifford
• Keywords: england, rebel, pregnant minor, based on true story, teenage girl, seaside,

	6.8/10
	85% – Critics
	78% – Audience

Wish You Were Here Storyline

In a staid English seaside town after the Second World War, sixteen-year-old Lynda Mansell grows up with her widowed father and younger sister. Mature beyond her years because of the untimely death of her mother, Lynda has been swearing constantly from an early age. And with the wink of an eye or the flash of a thigh, she finds love in all the wrong places, much to the chagrin of her cautious father. When her father’s best friend seduces Lynda – and leaves her pregnant and alone – this outwardly bold, inwardly vulnerable girl must find a manner to veer from the course of self-destruction… and face the inevitable undertaking of growing up.—MGM/UA Home Video

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Wish You Were Here Movie Reviews

A girl with more vivacity than her society can contain

This film is loosely based on the early life of Cynthia Payne, an infamous British prostitute and madam who has been the subject of other films. It was the debut for British actress Emily Lloyd, who played Linda aka Cynthia Payne. The film follows Linda’s sexual awakening with flash backs to her younger childhood.

Linda is an unhappy child whose mother died when she was young and her father, raising her and her sister as a lone parent, struggles to manage her as she reaches adolescence. Her burgeoning sexuality is ill-fitting with the social mores of the seaside community in which she lives. Her sexual curiosity is innocent and defiant. This makes for much hilarity: in one scene she is taken to see a psychiatrist who asks her what rude words she knows in order to assess her sexual precociousness. Linda is well aware of the psychiatrist’s intention and leads him a merry dance. In another she shows her legs and some of her underwear to fellow colleagues in a bus station. Yet there are times during her sexual development that are mundane and also sad. It is apparent that what Linda most wants is love and in particular is needy for love from her father, in the absence of her mother, but he never understands her enough to realise this.

The ending of the film, which I won’t share in the review, is typical of Linda’s character. She strides with pride and passion across a park and golfing course, yet she is young and vulnerable and somewhat foolhardy. The viewer admires her resolve, her fortitude and fears for her future.

The performances of all are superb. Emily Lloyd and Tom Bell deserve special mention. The plot is simple and effective and the characterisations credible. Although it is set in an England that has passed, the themes and meaning remain relevant for today’s young women.

another canny dissection of English manners and morals

David Leland’s companion piece to ‘Personal Services’ (also 1987) is another dramatized fiction suggested by the life of Cynthia Payne (London’s notorious ‘Luncheon Voucher Madam’), only here the canvas is smaller and the film, as a result, is less effective. A ‘prequel’ to the earlier feature, it relives the rebellious teenage years of the sassy young Ms. Payne (the names have again been changed) as she flies in the face of her stodgy English upbringing with a rousing rejoinder of “up yer bum!” Growing up too fast in a very slow corner of the Empire, she struggles through that awkward age when her cynicism about sex hasn’t caught up with her curiosity about it, leading to a good deal of engaging if familiar adolescent angst, reinforced by a bland seaside setting viewed through nostalgia. The film succeeds mostly on the charm of young Emily Lloyd, portraying a character who can’t decide if hers is a child’s mind in an adult’s body, or the other way around. Boredom motivates her rude behavior, and it’s a pity the film itself didn’t follow her good example. After making its point (and making it well), the story can’t help losing a little momentum.

Wish you were here, but I’m doing just fine, actually

With another actress in the lead, this film could have been another entry in the long, venerable line of British films about the misery of working-class life, a genre that stretches from “kitchen sink” classics like “Room at the Top” and “A Taste of Honey” (wonderfully ironic titles, of course) to such Mike Leigh bleakfests as “Meantime” and “All or Nothing.” However, this film stars Emily Lloyd. Her character of Lynda seems written as a fragile, wounded creature driven to extreme behavior by emotional neglect (her mother died when she was young and her father is a stern, distant dope) and a rigid, oppressive social hierarchy (she suffers after being used and abandoned by a series of heartless men who are either older or wealthier than herself). As played by Emily Lloyd, however, Lynda is a joyful nymphomaniac who delights in offending people, kind of a “Happy Hooker Goes to Liverpool.” Her outrageous behavior seems less a symptom of willful self-destructiveness than an animating demon impulse. In her dalliances with men, she seems to be seeking sexual satisfaction (“it’s very nice, but is that all there is?”) instead of love and security. Which makes her a distinctly post-feminist heroine out of “Sex and the City” instead of a victim of injustice out of a Theodore Dreiser novel. Which makes her completely out of sync with the rest of this gray, deterministic film. It doesn’t help that Emily Lloyd, at least here, is so beautiful that she’s literally luminous — she seems to glow with a light that isn’t shining on anything else in the film. Plus she’s so vital and boisterous that we don’t believe the circumstances which should be destroying her would even slow her down all that much. The key scene, which will either delight or disgust you, comes midway through the movie when lovely young Lynda takes a midnight stroll in her garden and ends up gamboling about, waking the neighbors (neighbours?) by screaming “up your BUUUUUUUUMMMMM!” at the top of her lungs. Is she a wounded soul begging for love and tolerance? A free spirit kicking against the pricks? A brat who needs to be spanked? Your answer to this question will determine your view of “Wish You Were Here.”