Hayley Mills caused a commotion doing a little bit of nudity on The Family Way and continued to push the edge with her next film, this one, where she bangs with an Indian dude - played by the handsome Shashi Kapoor. They really do it too - he takes er on the beach, the night her aunt dies.
It's a Cinderella story with Mills being a mousy girl (i.e. she's got glasses on) accompanying her aunt in Singapore. The aunt dies and the girl blossoms. She sleeps with Kapoor, gets a better hair cut and starts flirting with a white guy. Her rougish uncle Trevor Howard is around .
I haven't read the story but can see it's appeal for Mills - you have an arc, get to wear different types of clothes, you're the centre of attention.
I can't see why they made the film in the first place. It's very light - feels like it was better suited to say an hour on TV (apparently the TV version - with Lynn Redgrave - is superior). The story is slight. The characters not particularly rich. There's some neat location filming in Singapore, but you don't get a sense of the city, not really. The bulk of the characters are Englishmen abroad.
Mills is fine - accomplished, pretty. Maybe someone with more range would have done better, like say Redgrave or Rita Tushingham. Maybe Guy Green wasn't the right director. Maybe the screenwriters weren't the right people. Maybe the original material wasn't worth doing.
But I just kept going "what is the point of this" all the way through.
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