Educating Rita

6/8/2023

As with "Blood Brothers", Willy Russell has created another wonderfully evocative scenario for a bored, alcoholic "Professor Bryant" (Michael Caine) who finds himself tutoring aspiring working-class "Rita" (Julie Walters). She is the product of a state education system that has given her the rudiments but she needs more; she wants to be able to make her own choices - and they don't necessarily include settling down with her husband and having babies. Initially she is as daunted as she is inspired by the more intellectual environment he, and his students, inhabit but gradually their personalities entwine as it becomes clear that "Bryant" has plenty of demons in his own life - exemplified well by girlfriend "Julia" and her clumsily disguised affair with fellow lecturer Michael Williams' "Bri