One’s
memories of the Boulting Brothers’ The Family Way are likely to be
dominated by the highly sellable central situation of a young couple (Hayley
Mills’ Jenny and Hywel Bennett’s Arthur) unable to consummate their marriage
after moving in with his parents, and gradually subject to a barrage of local speculation,
gossip and worse. Viewed now though, this is just one element in a virtual catalogue
of sexual dysfunction, much of it carrying homosexual implications: most prominently
the fixation of Arthur’s father (John Mills) with his lost boyhood
friend, whom he even brought along on his honeymoon (he seems entirely oblivious to any
subtext, although his wife plainly isn’t). It’s hinted that Jenny’s mother was perversely
suspicious of her husband’s affection for his daughter, and even the movie’s
most outspokenly ribald character, Joe Thompson, played by Barry Foster, is, based
on his wife’s climactic outburst, a sexual strike-out whose “job” has been
filled for years by the milkman. The movie roots all this in a highly judgmental,
privacy-challenged, booze-sodden community, with little sense of space (the house
lacks a bathroom) or economic opportunity; it’s not exactly a societal hatchet job, but certainly
allows ample understanding of how one’s insecurities might only be amplified in such a milieu.
The movie is an easy pleasure, although it’s a shame that the resolution
basically consists of Arthur battering his way to redemption, beating up
Thompson and preparing to leave Jenny, his anger and resentment finally enabling
him to conquer the central problem; the final scene then bundles the couple out of the
way on a delayed honeymoon. But even then, as embodied by Bennett, Arthur seems
too inherently out of place for the marriage ever to work, his thoughts and ambitions
seldom seeming to align with those of the sweet but more basically content and locally-rooted
Jenny, providing little prospect of avoiding further troubles ahead.
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