She becomes frustrated and says she needs to know how it was. Rita asks how her Macbeth essay was, but Frank tries to get her talk more about her life. Frank is shocked, but Rita explains that Denny justifiably feels betrayed by her. She glumly says she is going to stay with her mother, since Denny kicked her out - if she wouldn't go off the pill, then she had to leave. They all started singing again, even her mother, and this made her come back to her lessons with Frank. At one point her mother began to cry and said they should be singing better songs, but everyone pretended she was drunk. Everyone was singing songs and she thought they were all pretending they were happy and surviving. After leaving his house she went to the pub where Denny and her mother and some others were, even after deciding she’d never go there again. She does not even fit in with her own people anymore. Sadly, Rita says she is okay in this room with him but out in the world she is a freak. He only wanted her there to amuse them, she claims.įrank becomes angry and says if she really feels that way she should leave. Frank says he wanted her to be herself, and Rita replies that she does not want to be herself, as she is stupid and thinks one day she can be like the rest of them. Annoyed, Rita says she does not want to be funny but to talk seriously with everyone and not play the court jester. She counters by asking if he dresses up and brings nice wine to dinner parties and he admits he does.įrank tells her everyone there would have been happy with who she is - ”someone who’s funny, delightful, charming…” (49). Frank smiles and says she did not buy the wrong wine and did not need to dress up or bring wine at all. She spent all day picking out clothes because none of hers seemed to work, then took the wrong bus and was late to his house, and then realized she’d bought the wrong wine. Even when she tried to explain he did not care, so she decided to go on her own. Rita protests that she did apologize, and says Denny did not want to go and they had a huge fight. Maybe that's what happens when you start with an idealistic, challenging idea, and then cynically try to broaden its appeal.Frank tells Rita that Julia does not like when she has a party planned for eight and only six people come it does not bother him, but it did bother Julia. When Caine's professor, at the end of this movie, flies off to Australia to maybe sober up and maybe make a fresh start, it's a total cop-out - not by him, but by the screenplay. ![]() They're made to deliver speeches, take positions and make decisions that are required by the plot, not by their own inner promptings. There is a real character there, just as there was in Caine's boozy diplomat in the recent flop " Beyond the Limit." In both movies, though, the characters are not well-served by the story. To the degree that "Educating Rita" does work, the credit goes to Michael Caine, who plays a man weary and kind, funny and self-hating. Russell's movie rewrite has added mistresses, colleagues, husbands, in-laws, students and a faculty committee, all unnecessary. They were on the stage together for a long time, and by the end of the play we had shared in their developing relationship. The original "Educating Rita," a long-running London stage hit by Willy Russell, had only the two characters. ![]() Because even the movie doesn't really believe that, it departs from the stage play to bring in a lot of phony distractions. The books are like incantations that, used properly, will exorcise Cockney accents and alcoholism. There is a lot of talk about Blake this and Wordsworth that. They pass the books back and forth a lot. The idea of the curmudgeon and the Cockney was not new when Bernard Shaw wrote "Pygmalion," and it is not any newer in "Educating Rita." But it could have been entertaining, if only I'd believed they were reading those books. She sees him as a man who ought to sober up and return to his first love, writing poems. Caine sees Walters as a fresh, honest, unspoiled intelligence. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say they both fall into love with the remake job they'd like to do on each other.
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