Not sure I find Sandy Dennis very credible, it's a mannered performance, at times impassive and disengaged, at times the opposite - for no discernible reason other than perhaps to maintain her familiar unfathomable screen personna.
Clearly written by a woman, judged by the savage portrayal of the sadistic hospital matron who needlessly blocks the young mother from even glimpsing her recovering infant under the pretence of efficiency and rules, in contrast to the kind (male) consultant who is only too happy to allow this.
Ian McKellan plays a pleasant young man who one would assume seduces the Dennis character only that she seems neither stirred nor shaken by his advances. Nevertheless clearly we gather from her change of costume into something more comfortable and it being morning, that intimacy has taken place. Somehow this significant event has, while changing her state irrevocably, left her manner as neutral and unchanged as if it never happened. And, oddly, the film ended suddenly leaving me feeling exactly the same - as if nothing of interest or significance had happened.
Clearly written by a woman, judged by the savage portrayal of the sadistic hospital matron who needlessly blocks the young mother from even glimpsing her recovering infant under the pretence of efficiency and rules, in contrast to the kind (male) consultant who is only too happy to allow this.
Ian McKellan plays a pleasant young man who one would assume seduces the Dennis character only that she seems neither stirred nor shaken by his advances. Nevertheless clearly we gather from her change of costume into something more comfortable and it being morning, that intimacy has taken place. Somehow this significant event has, while changing her state irrevocably, left her manner as neutral and unchanged as if it never happened. And, oddly, the film ended suddenly leaving me feeling exactly the same - as if nothing of interest or significance had happened.