Permissive (1970)

First off, I love these films that the BFI put out on their Flipside label like Private Road and Man of Violence. It's not that these film are very good but they illustrate unconsciously, a time where Britain (or London) made modest  arty or exploitative films on the cheap. We still do but that's due to a home video market. These films are before that. I can only imagine these films were sponsored by, made in and for London. Their appeal is distinctly colocuial- there are no stars in them... no international ones, at least and when they do have exploitable content, it's not really anything too major. To me, their charm is in the fact, they stand as a time capsule that transport you back to the style, taste and 'mores' of a few generations behind us.
Permissive is essentially, the tale of a young girl,who becomes involved with a band and being, for lack of a better word, a groupie. Now this film is hardly worth your time; it's predictable, populated with non-actors and it's horribly dated but it did take me back to when I was really excited into a certain band and got involved with other intense fans. Dear reader, they were the best of times and they were the worst of times. I loved spending time with these people and yet we were all in competition, to prove our worth and that we were bigger fans than others and such and so on. The great success of this film is that it successfully achieves that feeling of competition mixed with a sense of of belonging. Like I say, the movie's band was a real band called Forever More and i'm sure they had a few hits... Not enough to co-opt a movie, mind you but one of their songs I recognised a sample from a Talib Kweli song, Beautiful Struggle. There's no mention of the original in the liner notes of Mr Kweli's album. Which is an ironic conclusion to a film that was forgotten, brushed off and forgotten just as easily...

I watched Permissive (1970) on BluRay, via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with ChungKing Express (1988)...