THE L-SHAPED ROOM **

Life in a Notting Hill boarding-house circa the early sixties. Bryan Forbes wrote and directed "The L-Shaped Room" from Lynne Reid Banks' novel. The inhabitants of the boarding house include Leslie Caron as a pregnant French girl, Tom Bell as the aspiring writer who falls for her, Brock Peters as a West Indian jazz musician who happens to be gay, Cicely Courtneidge as an ageing actress who also happens to be gay, Patricia Phoenix as the prostitute in the basement and Avis Bunnage as their landlady, misfits all. This kitchen-sink movie isn't in the same class as "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" or "A Taste of Honey" and it's overlong but Caron is outstanding, (she won the BAFTA and a Golden Globe and was nominated for the Oscar), and the rest of the cast are excellent, (Phoenix steals it in her one 'big' scene). Despite its fairly grim setting, it was a sizeable hit with audiences, obviously impressed with the new-found freedoms it offered.