Capital Celluloid 2021 — Day 3: Wed May 19

Olivia (Audry, 1951): Cine Lumiere, 6.35pm

The screening of this film on 19 May will be introduced by Professor Ginette Vincendeau (King’s College London). Full detsils of all the screenings can  be found here.

Time Out review:
Based on the novel by Dorothy Bussy (originally published pseudonymously), Olivia is set in a French girls' boarding school late in the 19th century, and deals with suppressed love, idolatry and inner conflict, a million miles away from infantile crushes on 'Miss'. Perhaps a little long, it narrowly misses being maudlin and hammy thanks to the performance by Edwige Feuillère as the charismatic head teacher, Mademoiselle Julie, on whom Olivia more than dotes. Although the main theme is self-control and self-will, references and innuendoes point to lesbian love, and it's not hard to imagine that in the '50s the censors' eyebrows would have shot up (eleven minutes were in fact cut on its first release in this country).

Here (and above) is the trailer.