The Greengage Summer (1961)

Set in the Champagne region of France, a 16 year old girl (Susannah York) on holiday with her mother and three siblings must take charge of the younger children after her mother is taken seriously ill to a hospital. At the country chateau where they're staying, they meet a mysterious Englishman (Kenneth More) who takes a fancy to the visitors which disturbs his mistress (Danielle Darrieux), the inn's proprietor. "Coming of age" films are plentiful and usually predictable but this one is special. Based upon the novel by Rumer Godden, the director Lewis Gilbert (THE SPY WHO LOVED ME) manages, for the most part, to avoid the cliches of the genre while walking a fine tightrope to avoid the Lolita-esque elements inherent in the screenplay which lesser film makers may have fallen prey to. The young York (in only her third film) blooms and glows in the role of a girl entering womanhood and all the conflicts that come with it, though I must confess the puffy looking and aging Kenneth More seems an unlikely fantasy for an adolescent girl. The striking cinematography is courtesy of Oscar winner Freddie Young (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA) and the delicate score by Richard Addinsell. It was retitled LOSS OF INNOCENCE in the U.S. presumably because Americans wouldn't know what a greengage was (it's a fruit). With Jane Asher, Maurice Denham and Bessie Love.