Family Life (1971) on Netflix
Janice Baildon lives with parents who hold conservative, working-class views and treat her efforts to find her own way as misbehaving. When she becomes pregnant, they insist on an abortion.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.5/102,396 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes80%
Trailer
Plot summary
Janice Baildon is a young woman who lives with parents whose views are conservative and working class, and whose days follow a dull routine. Whenever she tries to make her own choices, they call it misbehaving and tell her so. They grow worried about her rebellious behavior. When she becomes pregnant, they are shocked. In an era that treated pregnancy outside marriage as shameful, they insist that she have an abortion, and they keep on at her about the life she is living and the choices she is making.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Family Life (1971)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- When producer Tony Garnett pitched the film to financier Nat Cohen, Cohen summarised it as "a mad girl goes into a mental hospital and goes madder. An unhappy ending. No laughs, no sex," and told Garnett and Ken Loach they could make a lot of money "if you weren't such a bunch of bloody communists."
- Producer Tony Garnett became interested in the work of psychiatrist R. D. Laing when a member of his family suffered from mental illness, and the play that resulted, Two Minds, was inspired by the story of Julie, a case in Laing's 1960 book The Divided Self.
- Producer Tony Garnett said Family Life was the only subject he insisted on having "two bites at the cherry", calling it almost an obsession to understand what had gone on and saying it was to do with a woman in his life and a painful time.
- The filming was marked by clashes: the writer, David Mercer, wanted his script filmed to the letter, while the director, Ken Loach, encouraged improvisation.
- While editing Family Life, director Ken Loach was involved in a car accident that injured him and killed his mother-in-law and his five-year-old son.
