An attractive young man and woman share glances at the workplace. Then, meeting on the bus, they somehow agree to a date and soon they're experiencing A Kind of Loving. This 1962 kitchen sink film presents a remarkably credible progression from awkward courtship to disillusioned romance between a couple of inexperienced young people.
Vic (Alan Bates) is an average fellow, maybe a little quiet. Ingrid (June Ritchie) is about the same, though a bit more passive. Both are already somehow quite sure their date is going to happen so the two of them stumbling through an idea to see a movie together seems such a formality, neither one actually asks a straight variation of "Will you go out with me?"
A little idle chatter and lingering stares and it seems they're a couple. Life's pretty simple, isn't it? But then Ingrid's submissive nature compels her to bring a chatty friend along for a date. Vic quickly loses patience and storms off. Is that the end?
He still watches Ingrid at social gatherings. He confesses to a friend that sometimes he still wishes they were together, sometimes he really doesn't. Then he gets her pregnant and that's all she wrote. Well, not quite. The film becomes a drama about Ingrid's domineering mother and Vic having to deal with his wife's inability to assert herself.
The performances by Ritchie and Bates are terrific and the writing captures such an authentic sense of young romance, it's fascinating to watch.
A Kind of Loving is available on The Criterion Channel.
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