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Ballet Shoes
Dec. 26th, 2007 11:12 pmAwwwww:-)
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rozk, I had two hours of absolute bliss watching this pin-perfect and suitably tart adaptation. Even my father was sufficiently mollified that we watched Darcey Bussell on B4 afterwards too. It was the first real moment of peacefulness I've felt this Xmas..
But am sure in the novel the entire adult romantic plot (let alone love triangle) did not exist. And that Theo was not the not very subtly implied former gladtime girl but much more respectable. And that Garnie was much much older and more solid. But maybe this was mere child's eye view and I am wrong .. I am now v curious what clues if any there were in novel that the Drs were indeed lesbians. (The TV version clearly if quietly implies it and it is the obvious modern interpretation : but at that time they could surely simply have been with equal likeliness, like many women of that time, spinster post Great War and longtime best friends?)
Anyway it was wonderfully done, extremely faithful and yet not in the least fusty or fussy. The joy of the book was the very real substratum of desperate financial need and how everyone worked together to get round it; the book is not at all the candyfloss wish fulfilment a title like that would nowadays imply. Indeed I remember learning quite a bit of non-decimal arithmetic from the lengthy working out of how to pay for material to buy new frocks for "maudition", a crucial part of the book I was glad to see left intact!!
I suppose nowadays Posy and Pauline would become stars on X-factor or Pop Idol - helas!! But what of Petrova? I guess, like us, she'd be happily cruising on the Internet in some subset of geek fandom.. is that an advance??
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rozk, I had two hours of absolute bliss watching this pin-perfect and suitably tart adaptation. Even my father was sufficiently mollified that we watched Darcey Bussell on B4 afterwards too. It was the first real moment of peacefulness I've felt this Xmas..But am sure in the novel the entire adult romantic plot (let alone love triangle) did not exist. And that Theo was not the not very subtly implied former gladtime girl but much more respectable. And that Garnie was much much older and more solid. But maybe this was mere child's eye view and I am wrong .. I am now v curious what clues if any there were in novel that the Drs were indeed lesbians. (The TV version clearly if quietly implies it and it is the obvious modern interpretation : but at that time they could surely simply have been with equal likeliness, like many women of that time, spinster post Great War and longtime best friends?)
Anyway it was wonderfully done, extremely faithful and yet not in the least fusty or fussy. The joy of the book was the very real substratum of desperate financial need and how everyone worked together to get round it; the book is not at all the candyfloss wish fulfilment a title like that would nowadays imply. Indeed I remember learning quite a bit of non-decimal arithmetic from the lengthy working out of how to pay for material to buy new frocks for "maudition", a crucial part of the book I was glad to see left intact!!
I suppose nowadays Posy and Pauline would become stars on X-factor or Pop Idol - helas!! But what of Petrova? I guess, like us, she'd be happily cruising on the Internet in some subset of geek fandom.. is that an advance??
