The hired boy's daddy was strict, but he didn't mind loaning out his mallet to love-crazed young George (played by David Morrissey who, perhaps scarred by this very film, went on to marry Sigmund Freud's great-granddaughter in real life) who thought Alma (Helen Mirren) was "living with" (slang for engaging in marital relations with) her elderly, ill husband "Rats" (the late great Harry Andrews)just after having several weeks of mad "living" with young George and declaring mutually sudden eternal love. The besotted young handyman took the mallet(three thwacks)to old Rats's non-threatening, dozing dome and finished him off nattily, sending both shellshocked-but-innocent Alma and his unrepentant self to court. Alma, wife and mother of two young sons,has marched to her own drummer and deemed the mad, impetuous fling to commence when Houseboy George, washing her bedroom window, sees a pair of those full, loose, glossy satin '30's undies (green with beige lace)lying on her unoccupied bed and enters the room, picks the seductive undergarment up, cuddles it, sits down on the bed and begins to tremble fitfully, until Alma conveniently enters and assesses the lust-o'ercome state of her personally chosen hired boy (tall, muscular, sexually viable). Alma begins to stroke his shivering frame and ignites the affair, ignoring signs of extreme jealousy and instability in her ardent young swain. She dresses divinely, takes him on a spree to a London hotel, and seems impervious to their extra-marital romps and tiffs (born of George's increasing jealousy) taking place within easy earshot of both ill-fated husband "Rats" and the stoic, uncritical mother's helper, Irene. David Suchet, as Alma's canny barrister (quite good-looking he is sans Poirot mustache), has the job of crafting a defense for a woman who wants none. George is determined to pay the price for this "great love," and all his fine barrister (played by Oliver Ford Davies, the marvelous character actor of many a suspenseful production)can do is play on his youth and corruptibility in the grip of female wiles. I shall not spoil the very (bitter) end to this rather odd-but-true drama, except to say the three strikes causing an additional death do seem impossibly brought about. How could she do it THREE TIMES? I shall leave you with that. This is finely acted dramatic fare - better than anything you'll see on your tube now in these lean dramatic days.
Review of Cause célèbre
