The British cinema of the late Eighties seemed too often to be rooted in the past, and here's another Hope and Glory-meets-Yanks set in the wartime years. With is multiplicity of period trimmings, it looks, to use the vernacular of the Liverpool where its rather grim story is set, 'dead expensive'. It's also a fairly good job of work all round. Jane Horrocks is Rita, a slightly repressed teenager looked after by two aunts (Joan Plowright, Billie Whitelaw) and soon pitched into an encounter with an American soldier who wants what wartime Yanks were supposed to want. When she slaps him off regretfully, he turns to her fun-loving Aunt Billie instead. Capable, careful performances etch themselves into a reasonably interesting portrait of the times, authentic to almost the last detail - although I'd like to know what the coin was that Rita is given to buy 40 2½d stamps.


©ipc tx. Film content from TVTimes