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While this is a story that needs to be told, somehow this film does not come together. The lead, Bel Powley, has a wide eyed look that seems to be almost a caricature of innocence. The attraction of the soldier and her mother does not have feeling and he is poorly explained. Some of the problem that the actors had was in the writing. For example nothing in the Bel Powley character showed the leadership as the dying mother declared. She showed innocence, not the clever reading of people that leaders have. Still there were touching moments and a history that should be known.

I couldn't identify with much of it, but this movie did hit on the disquieting contradictions of sex and "romance". Some of the imagery has haunted me and gets to some parts of the female sexual psyche that many will not want to explore or even have pointed out to them. It has taken me years to get cynical enough to really appreciate this movie. Not for the young romantic!