Cinema: Russell: Spoofing the Spoof

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

—William Blake

Director Ken Russell is a true child of Blake. His two most recent films, The Music Lovers and The Devils, were so full of tortures, perversions and sexual hysteria that they could have been rated X for X-cess if for nothing else. The Boy Friend reveals Russell's other side—the campy, lyrical side that has been seen so far only in some memorable British TV documentaries. But on this side as well, Russell does not know when enough is enough. Having made too much of a bad thing in his earlier films, he now makes too much of a basically good thing.

Far from simply transcribing Sandy Wilson's 1954 Broadway pastiche of 1920s musicals, Russell's screenplay frames it within several other stories. The main one deals with a seedy repertory troupe that is performing The Boy Friend somewhere in the English provinces. This device enables Russell not only to show the troupe onstage doing scenes from the show but at the same time affectionately to mock the whole genre of backstage musicals.

The troupe's leading lady breaks her ankle, and the mousy, bespectacled assistant stage manager (Twiggy) is dragooned into taking over her role. The director (Max Adrian) even tells her: "You're going out there as a youngster, but you've got to come back a star." Sure enough, she does, for in the audience that day is the great Hollywood director De Thrill (Vladek Sheybal). While he watches the performance, he fantasizes how he would shoot the production numbers, enabling Russell to imitate the old Busby Berkeley style movie musicals.

This film represents Twiggy's acting debut and, except for a brief turn in a TV commercial a few years back, her first professional singing and dancing. With plans for further film musicals already under way, it seems she is fully embarked on a second career at the ripe age of 22. As the stage manager, she does not yet consistently manage the stage, except for some fancy tap dancing. She is most effective when she has to portray awkwardness, shyness, winsome young love. How much of this is performance and how much mere exploitation of her rather endearing presence? Twiggy would not be the first performer to build a movie career on presence alone.

Otherwise, the Ken Russell stock company gets a good workout. Christopher Gable, Tchaikovsky's decadent homosexual friend in The Music Lovers, is all chorus-boy charm as Twiggy's costar. Adrian is preposterously hammy as the preposterous ham of a repertory director. And who is that actress who turns in a fetching, funny cameo performance as the leading lady with the broken ankle? Why, it's—it's Glenda Jackson!