An adult Hayley Mills plays a young woman named Polly who accompanies her awful, snooty aunt Brenda de Banzie on a trip to India where circumstances have her on her own and finally enjoying life once away she gets away from the old bat. De Banzie has a black sheep son, Trevor Howard, who wants nothing to do with his mother, and once you see her dealing with nice nails, you'll understand why. This character is perfectly dreadful, and circumstances surrounding her character don't come too soon. De Banzie sinks her teeth into this role, A variation of the character that the wonderful florence-based played in "Rebecca".
Mills and de Banzie are accompanied around India by sweet native Shashi Kapoor who gets to show Mills parts of the country she would not have seen otherwise and the real nightlife, not one created just for high society tourists from America or Europe. The rambunkiousness of young Indian adults in the mid-to-late 60s if something you rarely see on screen, at least in the film done in English, and there's even a flamboyant Indian male hairdresser thrown in, making a big deal of the fact that he's picked up a muscular Scandinavian sailor. Not something you see normally in a British film from this era!
Like Annette Funicello going on to do the "Beach Party" movies, Hayley Mills had quite a different result career once she got out from Disney. She's initially shy and unsure of herself, but as she becomes more free, her true spark is revealed and Mills does a great job in showing this young lady blossoming. The film slows down a little bit in the last quarter and becomes a bit cumbersome with Howard and the Asian woman he's keeping company with, a sudden outburst rather cold and slitgery, like a roll that Gale Sondergaard would have played 30 years before. The film is bittersweet but enlightening, with mostly interesting characters and a story to care about.
Mills and de Banzie are accompanied around India by sweet native Shashi Kapoor who gets to show Mills parts of the country she would not have seen otherwise and the real nightlife, not one created just for high society tourists from America or Europe. The rambunkiousness of young Indian adults in the mid-to-late 60s if something you rarely see on screen, at least in the film done in English, and there's even a flamboyant Indian male hairdresser thrown in, making a big deal of the fact that he's picked up a muscular Scandinavian sailor. Not something you see normally in a British film from this era!
Like Annette Funicello going on to do the "Beach Party" movies, Hayley Mills had quite a different result career once she got out from Disney. She's initially shy and unsure of herself, but as she becomes more free, her true spark is revealed and Mills does a great job in showing this young lady blossoming. The film slows down a little bit in the last quarter and becomes a bit cumbersome with Howard and the Asian woman he's keeping company with, a sudden outburst rather cold and slitgery, like a roll that Gale Sondergaard would have played 30 years before. The film is bittersweet but enlightening, with mostly interesting characters and a story to care about.