There’s a scene towards the end of “Misbehaviour” that the film has been working to. The director knows it. The audience knows it. And the film knows it. In it, two main characters meet for the first time and begin to briefly – but incisively – speak to each other and articulate the restless complications of the film’s themes. By the time it comes, “Misbehaviour” has made valiant, if erratic, attempts to examine various strands of the ongoing fight against patriarchy. Everything thus far has not worked, but the scene sets the film into context in a way that feels instructive and thoughtful. But the conversation is interrupted before it reaches a natural end. It feels frustrating and yet impressive. In that moment, it is as if the film recognises the difficulty of settling its stakes, and in the remaining ten minutes the film feels more confident in its awareness of that uncertainty. It speaks to the untidy but rewarding ways that “Misbehaviour” wrestles with a story that feels necessary today.
Philippa Lowthorpe directs a script from Gaby Chiappe and Rebecca Frayn that ambitiously traces two competing stories. In 1970 a nascent group that would become part of the Women’s Liberation Group in the UK decided to protest the Miss World Competition. In 1970, Miss Grenada would become the first black women to win the pageant, becoming a landmark moment for women of colour – and particularly Caribbean women. These two stories are tied together on film, and in history, as indicative of the conflicted ways of examining issues of feminism. By its end, “Misbehaviour” recognises how intersectionality is the only way of doing this, even if the film itself is occasionally uncertain about how to get there.
Credit to Chiappe and Frayn; their ambition in trying to dissect these two stories in one is impressive. Even when the script feels torn between two films, Lowthorpe’s direction valiantly streamlines it. The first film stars Keira Knightley as future historian Sally Alexander, reading for a BA in history as a mature student and divorced single-mother in an all-male establishment. Sally’s increased disillusion with the maleness of academia spurs her participation in an edgy woman’s group. The second film stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Miss Grenada, navigating the pageant world that already considers her as incidental both for her race and for being from a tiny island still under British rule. Eventually, the two films collide when the activists launch a protest against the patriarchy on the night of the pageant. Both films are compelling, even when they cut against each other in jarring ways. As Sally’s story builds with a somewhat disjointed progression, Jennifer’s story becomes an observation of the narrow opportunities available for women, especially women of colour, to succeed in life.
Lowthorpe’s direction sometimes seems more enamoured with the second story – understandably. The pageant story allows for dissonances and moments of spectacles that offer more opportunities for the film’s aesthetics to take advantage of. It doesn’t help that, as written, the Sally arc is more familiar than you’d expect. In the early scenes, in particular, the script seems uncertain how to wring momentum from the knowledge we already have about the struggles of women in the 1970s. But where Sally’s story solidifies is in the ways it allows the forever dependable Keira Knightley and a charming Jessie Buckley, in a hit-or-miss role, to play off each other. As the arc builds, the film becomes surer. There’s a moment in the film where Sally’s outlook on the world changes, and it’s one where you feel the film getting more certain of itself. Sally sits in a classroom and realises that her words hold little sway in the room of men and the camera closes in on her as Knightley reacts. We know exactly what she’s thinking. Zac Nicholson’s cinematography frames the faces of all the women in the film in ways that trap them in the box of the camera, and then allows them to communicate their stories through their eyes. Women silently, but impactfully, reacting to what’s around them. In a scene late in the film, the camera closes on Mbatha-Raw’s face as she silently reacts to a comment from a contestant. It’s the surest sign that Nicholson’s camera and Lowthorpe’s direction recognise the best thing about “Misbehaviour”. The film is at the mercy of its cast. Lucky for all involved, the cast is committed.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw turns up 28 minutes into the film, stepping off the bus as Miss Grenada in a movie-star entrance that feels fitting. Mbatha-Raw has been a dependable player on screen over the last decade, and “Misbehaviour” allows her a role that is tough and complex while giving her the movie-star treatment so many of her white peers have been afforded. She’s never looked more like a star on screen, and the film knows it. Even a Grenadian accent that comes and goes cannot dim the precise charm of her work here. She deepens the film on screen, doing layers of work with a glance. Even when the script cannot commit to being as incisive as it wants to, it’s clear that the team behind it are fascinated by the characters and their stories. And when “Misbehaviour” gets it right, it really does. There’s a mid-film television interview where Knightley nails the feeling of impending futility in the fight against the patriarchy. Beyond Knightley, Mbatha-Raw and Buckley, Greg Kinnear is deliciously smarmy as a womanizing Bob Hope. Loreece Harrison offers a tender performance as the black Miss South Africa, forced to compete against her white counterpart in the middle of apartheid. Lesley Manville turns a few short scenes into a sharp portrayal of a woman coming to peace with her terrible husband.
At the end of the film, when the predictable “here are the real people that inspired these characters” moments come, “Misbehaviour” has one more trick up its sleeve in the way it chooses to play that moment. It’s weird to say it’s the best part of the film even as it has no real narrative momentum, but it makes sense. “Misbehaviour” is fun and enjoyable as a film but takes on waves of value when you think of it in context as a moment in time about real people. The last shot of the film is a title card – “attempts to bring down the patriarchy remain ongoing.” I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Misbehaviour” gains credit for its own acknowledgement of the messiness that comes with a movement – and even the ways that the fight only works when it cuts across race. If it seems mildly embarrassed about its own awareness of the schism between white feminism and black women’s struggles, it gains value for treating the two black contestants with a surprising grace. Mbatha-Raw and Harrison develop a rewarding arc, mapping the struggle black women must make to be seen in white spaces. While “Misbehaviour” may seem to some viewers like it has less answers and more questions, or too light for the tough subject matter, it’s a small delight in its own right – messy, and unpredictable but entertaining and satisfying.
“Misbehaviour” is streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Vudu and Apple TV
