The British tradition of "kitchen sink" social realism, so important in the late fifties and early sixties, largely disappeared from the cinema screen in the seventies; "Spring and Port Wine" from 1969 seemed to mark the end of the line. That does not mean that it disappeared altogether as the genre found a new home on television, especially as part of the BBC's "Play for Today" series. Some of the directors who cut their teeth on that series moved on to making feature films when "kitchen sink" started to recolonise the cinema in the eighties. Alan Clarke, the director of this film, was one of them.
Like many of the social realist dramas of the fifties and sixties which were adaptations of contemporary plays and novels, "Rita, Sue and Bob Too" is based on a literary source, in this case two stage plays by Andrea Dunbar. The action takes place on the Buttershaw Estate in Bradford, the council estate on which Dunbar herself lived. Rita and Sue are two teenaged schoolgirls who earn some money by babysitting for a middle-class couple, Bob and Michelle. Both girls become sexually involved with Bob, and they regularly meet for threesomes, generally in the back of his car while he is driving them back home. The film explores the complications which ensue after Michelle discovers her husband's infidelity. There is also a sub-plot about Sue's relationship with her Asian boyfriend, Aslam.
The film was advertised under the slogan "Thatcher's Britain with her knickers down", and that just about sums it up, an uneasy mixture of sex comedy and social realist drama. Imagine "No Sex Please, We're British" directed by Ken Loach. The estate is depicted as a grim, run-down, joyless slum, all boarded-up buildings, graffiti and broken windows. The people who live there are depicted as idle, shiftless, violent, physically unattractive, foul-tempered and foul-mouthed; Aslam initially seems an exception, but he quickly reveals himself to be a violent bully. You will hear the "f-word" used a lot in this film, generally as an expletive rather than in its literal sense. (The word which Rita and Sue normally use for having sex is "jump", pronounced "joomp", a Northern expression rarely used in this sense in Southern England). Dunbar and Clarke's view of the middle classes seems just as unfavourable; the upmarket housing development where Bob and Michelle live is smarter and tidier than Buttershaw, but no less bleak and soulless.
It is hardly surprising that Dunbar made herself very unpopular with her neighbours on the Buttershaw Estate; what is more surprising (and to her credit) is that she continued living there, unlike many working-class writers who disappear into middle-class suburbia after their first literary hit. She was to live there for the rest of her life; she was to die at the tragically early age of 29 in 1990, only three years after this film was made. She had a serious alcohol problem and died after being taken ill in The Beacon, the pub (since demolished) shown in the opening scenes. Clarke was also to die prematurely in 1990, at the age of 54.
That "Thatcher's Britain" tag has been taken up by some of the reviewers on this board, but the film does not have a lot to say about Thatcherism. It may have been made in the eighties during her premiership, but the lives of the Sues and Ritas of this world would not in truth have been any different in Heath's or Callaghan's Britain during the seventies, or for that matter in Major's or Blair's Britain during the nineties.
Indeed, things are probably not too different in Johnson's Britain today, but I would agree with the reviewer who wrote that a film like this could not be made in 2022. The actresses who played them were both twenty, but Rita and Sue are supposed to be, at most, sixteen, possibly only fifteen, in which case Bob would be breaking the law. In 1987 nobody seems to have worried too much about that, but in 2022 a film about a forty-year-old man having sex with two teenage, possibly underage, girls could only be made, if at all, if he were to be portrayed as a creepy sexual predator. Which is not how Bob is portrayed at all. George Costigan plays him as a likeable Jack-the-lad figure, and Dunbar and Clarke are surprisingly sympathetic to his belief that, as he is not getting sexual satisfaction from his wife, he is entitled to look for it elsewhere, even with a couple of schoolgirls young enough to be his daughters.
Most of the earlier "kitchen sink" films, such as "Look Back in Anger", "A Kind of Loving", "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" and "Spring and Port Wine", were serious dramas rather than comedies, although they might have had occasional humorous moments. With "Rita, Sue and Bob Too" it's the other way around. The film occasionally touches on serious topics, but it's essentially a comedy. Or perhaps I should say it's meant to be a comedy, because there was little about it that I found funny. It relies too heavily on coarse vulgarity, and I always had the suspicion that it was laughing at working-class Yorkshire people rather than laughing with them. And attempts to get laughs about underage sex are never going to be funny. Well, perhaps they might have been considered so in 1987, but then the past is another country. 4/10.
Like many of the social realist dramas of the fifties and sixties which were adaptations of contemporary plays and novels, "Rita, Sue and Bob Too" is based on a literary source, in this case two stage plays by Andrea Dunbar. The action takes place on the Buttershaw Estate in Bradford, the council estate on which Dunbar herself lived. Rita and Sue are two teenaged schoolgirls who earn some money by babysitting for a middle-class couple, Bob and Michelle. Both girls become sexually involved with Bob, and they regularly meet for threesomes, generally in the back of his car while he is driving them back home. The film explores the complications which ensue after Michelle discovers her husband's infidelity. There is also a sub-plot about Sue's relationship with her Asian boyfriend, Aslam.
The film was advertised under the slogan "Thatcher's Britain with her knickers down", and that just about sums it up, an uneasy mixture of sex comedy and social realist drama. Imagine "No Sex Please, We're British" directed by Ken Loach. The estate is depicted as a grim, run-down, joyless slum, all boarded-up buildings, graffiti and broken windows. The people who live there are depicted as idle, shiftless, violent, physically unattractive, foul-tempered and foul-mouthed; Aslam initially seems an exception, but he quickly reveals himself to be a violent bully. You will hear the "f-word" used a lot in this film, generally as an expletive rather than in its literal sense. (The word which Rita and Sue normally use for having sex is "jump", pronounced "joomp", a Northern expression rarely used in this sense in Southern England). Dunbar and Clarke's view of the middle classes seems just as unfavourable; the upmarket housing development where Bob and Michelle live is smarter and tidier than Buttershaw, but no less bleak and soulless.
It is hardly surprising that Dunbar made herself very unpopular with her neighbours on the Buttershaw Estate; what is more surprising (and to her credit) is that she continued living there, unlike many working-class writers who disappear into middle-class suburbia after their first literary hit. She was to live there for the rest of her life; she was to die at the tragically early age of 29 in 1990, only three years after this film was made. She had a serious alcohol problem and died after being taken ill in The Beacon, the pub (since demolished) shown in the opening scenes. Clarke was also to die prematurely in 1990, at the age of 54.
That "Thatcher's Britain" tag has been taken up by some of the reviewers on this board, but the film does not have a lot to say about Thatcherism. It may have been made in the eighties during her premiership, but the lives of the Sues and Ritas of this world would not in truth have been any different in Heath's or Callaghan's Britain during the seventies, or for that matter in Major's or Blair's Britain during the nineties.
Indeed, things are probably not too different in Johnson's Britain today, but I would agree with the reviewer who wrote that a film like this could not be made in 2022. The actresses who played them were both twenty, but Rita and Sue are supposed to be, at most, sixteen, possibly only fifteen, in which case Bob would be breaking the law. In 1987 nobody seems to have worried too much about that, but in 2022 a film about a forty-year-old man having sex with two teenage, possibly underage, girls could only be made, if at all, if he were to be portrayed as a creepy sexual predator. Which is not how Bob is portrayed at all. George Costigan plays him as a likeable Jack-the-lad figure, and Dunbar and Clarke are surprisingly sympathetic to his belief that, as he is not getting sexual satisfaction from his wife, he is entitled to look for it elsewhere, even with a couple of schoolgirls young enough to be his daughters.
Most of the earlier "kitchen sink" films, such as "Look Back in Anger", "A Kind of Loving", "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" and "Spring and Port Wine", were serious dramas rather than comedies, although they might have had occasional humorous moments. With "Rita, Sue and Bob Too" it's the other way around. The film occasionally touches on serious topics, but it's essentially a comedy. Or perhaps I should say it's meant to be a comedy, because there was little about it that I found funny. It relies too heavily on coarse vulgarity, and I always had the suspicion that it was laughing at working-class Yorkshire people rather than laughing with them. And attempts to get laughs about underage sex are never going to be funny. Well, perhaps they might have been considered so in 1987, but then the past is another country. 4/10.