A Touch of Love Review: Maudlin Drama

Sandy Dennis stands out in the maudlin and misguided social-realism picture A Touch of Love, which pulls its punches on discussing abortion rights.

With glistening eyes and a bottom lip that threatens to quiver, the young woman goes back to her home – a large, spacious flat courtesy of her wealthy parents – and pours a big glass of gin as she runs a scalding hot bath. This would be a mostly innocuous act, if not for the fact that Rosamund is pregnant.

Across the United Kingdom in 1969, when A Touch of Love is set, acquiring a legal abortion was new and also incredibly difficult. The Abortion Act of 1967 required two doctors to approve the termination, and the woman must have met at least one of seven legal criteria in order for the abortion to be legal. The academic Rosamund doesn’t meet the criteria as she is “mentally and physically capable of having a baby”. This method of drinking copious amounts of liquor and a hot bath is her attempt to have a makeshift home-abortion. Her plan is scuppered, however, by the arrival of a gaggle of her friends including Roger (John Standing), an interminably deplorable love interest who embodies every red flag, and Joe (Michael Coles), a married man who propositions her when he’s had a touch too much to drink. 

These are the only men in Rosalind’s life, but neither are the father of the child. In fact, Rosamund takes a little glee in playing the two men off one another, while not sleeping with either one. The child – which never gets called illegitimate, even as every discussion revolving around Rosalind’s status as an unmarried woman appears to deplore her for allowing the baby’s existence – is actually the progeny of a BBC news anchor by the name of George (Ian McKellen, of Lord of the Rings), whom she has an awkward, highly un-arousing sexual encounter with on her couch. 

While Dennis’ central performance is remarkably brittle and excavates real emotion from the situation, the film – a prime example of the British social-realism boom that occurred in the late 60s – is played far too self-pitying. We spend extended periods of time with a woman who has been handed everything in life and whose character arc is not that she is able to recognise the privilege thrust upon her. Instead, her arc is to find emotional stability in becoming a mother while completing her PHD doctorate in philosophy.

The most we see of her struggle prior to the birth is when she is not permitted a seat on the bus. Her main difficulty afterwards  is that her baby, diagnosed with a congenital heart defect, is kept away from her by the health practitioners of the hospital. It is a tough scene that culminates in her screaming, disturbing every other patient, until she gets her own way. For a woman who respects the NHS, describing it as “the finest tribute to civilisation ever created”, she comes across as entitled instead of a desperate mother wishing to see her three month old baby. 

There’s a significant lack of momentum to A Touch of Love, which traverses around the life of Rosamund in nonlinear fashion. It is these leaps that provide energy, but when we reunite with Rosamund during her pregnancy and birth of baby Octavia, the picture drags its heels until the aforementioned hospital scene. The film jumps back in time to either her teenage years (still played by Dennis), or her past interactions with George that end in the baby’s conception, to contextualise the narrative.

In her eyes, her parents were neglectful for moving to Nairobi. It becomes apparent this is a reason she intends to keep the baby, instead of performing a cavalier abortion like her friend Lydia (Eleanor Bron) suggests. One of the more harrowing scenes of this kitchen sink drama is Lydia’s insouciant, casual telling of her own abortion where she walked into the road and got run over by a bus.

Dennis is absolutely splendid with what she has to work with, but the film pushes being maudlin to the point of excruciation. It is narratively unclear as to what we are to take dramatic pity on. That Rosamund is a woman, stuck without the right to abortion, and societally forced and shamed simultaneously is enough thematic juice to be a sturdy framework. But outside of the home abortion – which Hussein allots no dramatic heft as Rosamund just decides not to do it –  and the conversation with Lydia, this is a film that follows someone too self-pitying and dour when we consider the privileges allocated to her. 

DOP Peter Suschitzky shoots the film with a televisual flatness, attempting to capture the realism of the situation but it often makes the picture an ungratifying visual experience with its muted colour palette. Regardless, the restoration – which took place in 2021 – looks to have been a success. The restored version maintains the tiny imperfections and fluctuations that occur with shooting on film, allowing this version to keep its classic feel instead of that digital smoothness often seen in new editions. Also found on this new edition are various interviews, such as with director Warris Hussein, screenwriter Dame Margaret Drabble and with Ian Mckellen.

A Touch Of Love, which is adapted from Margaret Drabble’s award-winning novel The Millstone by Drabble herself, finds itself unable to stand out from within the social-realism boom of the 1960s. This might be due to the film pulling its dramatic punches, or that it chooses to focus on a wealthy, privileged protagonist rather than portraying the struggles of the working class, which is a defining feature of the subgenre. It seems disinterested in being dramatically impactful, or attempting to ignite the fiery conversation around abortion rights, one that has occurred in the 56 years since this film was released regardless. 

A new restoration of A Touch of Love was released on Blu-Ray, DVD and Digital Platforms by StudioCanal Vintage Classics on 17 March, 2025.