Personal Services

[Pye]

Just seen this, and hated it. Flat and repetitive. Leland's Mona Lisa got good light relief from the weirder side of the sex trade but after ten minutes posh men in panties stops being funny. Found it an unfunny mess and some bits such as the grandad and grandson sleeping with the same girl unpleasant though presented as funny

[Pye]

Meant to add, anyone like it? For me its joined a group of films like frenzy, whore, dirty weekend and the choirboys as films you need a shower after. The last thing i am is prudish: one of my favourite films is straw dogs, but this left me with a distinctly bad taste.

[Brief Encounter]

I loved it, Julie Walters is fantastic.

[pod1969]

I'm very fond of Personal Services, but I do have soft spot (an uncritically nostalgic penchant?) for many 'lesser' British films of the 80s (The Fruit Machine, She'll Be Wearing Pink Pajamas, The Supergrass, The Missionary, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, Stormy Monday). That may well be because that's when I came of age as a film lover, and though I was raised on British and American classics of the 40s, through to the 70s, I was keen to embrace something that was 'mine', so to speak.



Released the same year (1987) as Wish You Were Here, and also directed by David Leland, Personal Services was of course loosely based on the adult life of Cynthia Payne. Staying with that thought, as Wish You Were Here is an account of Payne's adolescence, I was wondering what people's thoughts were on its role as a 'prequel' to Personal Services.

[Dandy Forsdyke]

I love Personal Services and often watch it. I couldn't get on with Wish You Were Here as I found Emily Lloyd intensely annoying.

[MB]

I enjoyed 'Wish you were here', found 'Personal services' a bit of a bore I seem to remember.. As an ex gothy type of the eighties I have met quite a lot of people who think the Miss Whiplash fetish sex world is really risque - but it just makes me laugh. If I remember rightly, though, that was kind of the take in the film. Didn't they have really mundane scenes of having tea and cake next to someone popping in for a whipping? Haha - that was quite funny. (Apologies to anyone who may be in to this - but it really is just my humble opinion.)



I really liked Emily Lloyd - I thought she had a lovely, fresh take on things and I hoped to see more from her, only sadly, that isn't the case.



As for the question. I don't think it was a prequel as such - was it? I think they were too quite distinct stories based on the same person - or so I remember. I think I remember Cynthia Payne saying it didn't bear much relation to the truth (the first.)

[pod1969]

I don't think it was a prequel as such - was it? I think they were too quite distinct stories based on the same person - or so I remember. I think I remember Cynthia Payne saying it didn't bear much relation to the truth (the first.)

I wasn't suggesting that it was, categorically, a prequel, but rather that we can choose to view in that way (and, with the two films coming out in the same year and being made the same director, perhaps we're invited to). And, of course, biopics - which, strictly speaking, neither of these films are (certainly not WYWH) - are rarely fact-fests. Nonetheless, WYWH in particular does provide truthful insights into how a troubled youth caught up in the austerity and conservatism of the period in question might anticipate an unconventional adulthood. I'm just waffling now, so I'll shut up.