***
Lying brat ruins the lives of the two women who run her boarding school by accusing them of having a lesbian affair. Sufficiently dramatic to hold interest, but too stagy (it was based on the Lillian Hellman play) to entirely work as a movie. Indeed, every aspect of the film comes with its own theatrical caveat: Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine turn in good, if somewhat mannered performances, the dialogue is apt and well-written, yet occasionally stilted, and so on. It does, however, restore the specific lie and the ending of Hellman's play, both of which were changed when Wyler first filmed this story in 1936 as These Three. This version, in spite of this, suffers by comparison to the much more cinematic original. Young Veronica Cartwright, who plays bratty Karen Balkin's thieving classmate, is a bright spot. Well-intentioned, but rather tame.
Lying brat ruins the lives of the two women who run her boarding school by accusing them of having a lesbian affair. Sufficiently dramatic to hold interest, but too stagy (it was based on the Lillian Hellman play) to entirely work as a movie. Indeed, every aspect of the film comes with its own theatrical caveat: Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine turn in good, if somewhat mannered performances, the dialogue is apt and well-written, yet occasionally stilted, and so on. It does, however, restore the specific lie and the ending of Hellman's play, both of which were changed when Wyler first filmed this story in 1936 as These Three. This version, in spite of this, suffers by comparison to the much more cinematic original. Young Veronica Cartwright, who plays bratty Karen Balkin's thieving classmate, is a bright spot. Well-intentioned, but rather tame.
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