Let's admit it, we've all known girls like that, joyful, bubbly, free-spirited and cute as a button. Half girls-next-door, half Hollywood starlets, they weren't too tall because high stature could impress men and be a source of insecurities, their blond hair triggered accessibility (brunettes are more mysterious) and their faces held such a radiant joie-de-vivre smile anything coming from their mouth had the resonance of a mermaid's melody.
Well, that's Julie Christie as Diana Scott, one of these girls who embraced life with shining insolence, hovering over it from a socle built upon years of unending compliments. They made pretty girls look ordinary to the point of plain mediocrity, they could catch husbands' eyes while their misses were paying the cashier, they could take a five minute stroll in a job fair and be hired anywhere. Diana was like this: blessed by the Gods, having any doors opened to her without the burden of knocking. All it took for her was just existing. Other women could hardly sympathize with her and men would only wish to possess her or if the film was made today, get committed to her for the sole satisfaction of sharing pictures on Facebook and making other guys jealous.
Yes, there's an ugly word for that and it's "trophy girl" and while this could have worked as a title, John Schlesinger and writer Frederic Raphael had the right instinct by titling the film "Darling" which is certainly a deserved attribute for Diana ... at first glance. At the end, we'd think twice before using that epithet for "Darling" is the story of a girl who could have so many things in her life she never got properly satisfied, a girl that could have inspired every lyric from Elvis Presley's "You look like an angel". Indeed, this is a woman whose first accomplishments in the span of twenty minutes is to cheat on her dull husband and wrecks a happy family. Hardly the material that invites for empathy... and yet femme-enfant types tend to be forgiven, like we forgive children.
That's the nature of the beast and Julie Christie is such a spectacle by herself that watching her smiling, flirting, crying, pretending, make all the experience worth it. Christie was born to play that role, just watch her Oscar-winning clip and you'll be glad she's at least more a darling that the character she plays. There's a spontaneity in Christie/Diana that can melt the iciest heart, a sort of superficial innocence that awakens the inner father in each man and forgive even the act of cheating. That she lacks direction in her life is no problem at all, it's up to the director to give her life a meaning. And "Darling" is not much a character study but an exploration of a certain evolution of society that allowed such figures to bloom... and proliferate.
Yes, Dianas existed because the sixties permitted it. Her first husband bores her, so much for marital commitment. Robert, played by Dirk Bogarde, is a well-spoken, educate and literate journalist who wins her heart through his intellect. That such a man could fall for her and jeopardizes his family life for her speaks volumes about the power of that not-so-bright pint-sized beauty. And so they live together, settle down, have parties and she discovers the downside of intellectuals, the sound of typewriters and the lifelessness of books: she's bored, she hates books, she needs more... and then she wanders in her life from a casting couch that gives her a debut in a cheap horror flick to the kind of charity jobs where you're required to announce the winning numbers with your best smile. This is where she meets a sleazy playboy named Miles, and played by Lawrence Harvey.
At that point, it gets obvious that the life of Diana is a torchlight to explore the evolution of Britain in the 'swinging sixties' (I borrowed that from the synopsis), it was the time of the mini-skirt and the sexual revolution and Diana was a living incarnation of all the side-effects of women's liberation. She divorces, gets an abortion, gets in parties where games of dubious morality are played and enjoys the idleness of the dolce vita with her friend, he likes men but he's a photographer so he can't depart from the rule that every man has eyes for Diana. Her world overshadows the essential, as suggested by the opening credits sequence where a giant poster of her face replaces one about featuring starving African children. A similar echo is made in a sequence that hasn't dated well where uptight British bourgeois are served petits-fours by Black servants.
The future director of "Midnight Cowboy" has a rather inquisitive eye on British mores and shows that freedom is a smokescreen hiding a social farce. And being a constant man's pinball, Diana ends up losing the grip on her own life and can only seek unhappiness through wealth by accepting to marry a rich Italian widower... and subscribe to the same emptiness that governed her life. At the end, we don't think much of Diana Scott and we're not surprised by the demise she tries to attenuate in her voice-over narration, for there is a price to pay for having a beauty that makes them so accessible to fame or success, becoming inaccessible to decent human beings who can keep them grounded into reality.
"Darling" is an unexpectedly dark portrayal of such a life, it gets a tad long and repetitive at times, I doubt such a character deserved that long a time span but what remains is the time-capsule, and the prototype of Diana Scott, an adorable girl that turns out to be not so likable but by the standards of our ego-driven social-network and Kardashians-adoring era, she's definitely a darling with a major D.
Well, that's Julie Christie as Diana Scott, one of these girls who embraced life with shining insolence, hovering over it from a socle built upon years of unending compliments. They made pretty girls look ordinary to the point of plain mediocrity, they could catch husbands' eyes while their misses were paying the cashier, they could take a five minute stroll in a job fair and be hired anywhere. Diana was like this: blessed by the Gods, having any doors opened to her without the burden of knocking. All it took for her was just existing. Other women could hardly sympathize with her and men would only wish to possess her or if the film was made today, get committed to her for the sole satisfaction of sharing pictures on Facebook and making other guys jealous.
Yes, there's an ugly word for that and it's "trophy girl" and while this could have worked as a title, John Schlesinger and writer Frederic Raphael had the right instinct by titling the film "Darling" which is certainly a deserved attribute for Diana ... at first glance. At the end, we'd think twice before using that epithet for "Darling" is the story of a girl who could have so many things in her life she never got properly satisfied, a girl that could have inspired every lyric from Elvis Presley's "You look like an angel". Indeed, this is a woman whose first accomplishments in the span of twenty minutes is to cheat on her dull husband and wrecks a happy family. Hardly the material that invites for empathy... and yet femme-enfant types tend to be forgiven, like we forgive children.
That's the nature of the beast and Julie Christie is such a spectacle by herself that watching her smiling, flirting, crying, pretending, make all the experience worth it. Christie was born to play that role, just watch her Oscar-winning clip and you'll be glad she's at least more a darling that the character she plays. There's a spontaneity in Christie/Diana that can melt the iciest heart, a sort of superficial innocence that awakens the inner father in each man and forgive even the act of cheating. That she lacks direction in her life is no problem at all, it's up to the director to give her life a meaning. And "Darling" is not much a character study but an exploration of a certain evolution of society that allowed such figures to bloom... and proliferate.
Yes, Dianas existed because the sixties permitted it. Her first husband bores her, so much for marital commitment. Robert, played by Dirk Bogarde, is a well-spoken, educate and literate journalist who wins her heart through his intellect. That such a man could fall for her and jeopardizes his family life for her speaks volumes about the power of that not-so-bright pint-sized beauty. And so they live together, settle down, have parties and she discovers the downside of intellectuals, the sound of typewriters and the lifelessness of books: she's bored, she hates books, she needs more... and then she wanders in her life from a casting couch that gives her a debut in a cheap horror flick to the kind of charity jobs where you're required to announce the winning numbers with your best smile. This is where she meets a sleazy playboy named Miles, and played by Lawrence Harvey.
At that point, it gets obvious that the life of Diana is a torchlight to explore the evolution of Britain in the 'swinging sixties' (I borrowed that from the synopsis), it was the time of the mini-skirt and the sexual revolution and Diana was a living incarnation of all the side-effects of women's liberation. She divorces, gets an abortion, gets in parties where games of dubious morality are played and enjoys the idleness of the dolce vita with her friend, he likes men but he's a photographer so he can't depart from the rule that every man has eyes for Diana. Her world overshadows the essential, as suggested by the opening credits sequence where a giant poster of her face replaces one about featuring starving African children. A similar echo is made in a sequence that hasn't dated well where uptight British bourgeois are served petits-fours by Black servants.
The future director of "Midnight Cowboy" has a rather inquisitive eye on British mores and shows that freedom is a smokescreen hiding a social farce. And being a constant man's pinball, Diana ends up losing the grip on her own life and can only seek unhappiness through wealth by accepting to marry a rich Italian widower... and subscribe to the same emptiness that governed her life. At the end, we don't think much of Diana Scott and we're not surprised by the demise she tries to attenuate in her voice-over narration, for there is a price to pay for having a beauty that makes them so accessible to fame or success, becoming inaccessible to decent human beings who can keep them grounded into reality.
"Darling" is an unexpectedly dark portrayal of such a life, it gets a tad long and repetitive at times, I doubt such a character deserved that long a time span but what remains is the time-capsule, and the prototype of Diana Scott, an adorable girl that turns out to be not so likable but by the standards of our ego-driven social-network and Kardashians-adoring era, she's definitely a darling with a major D.