Connecting Rooms

Adapted from a stage play, but still riddled with act and scene pauses. A seedy boarding-house tale, with the inmates' self-constructed illusions protecting their battered souls from bravely borne truths, it's a fairly classic condensation of several fetishistic concerns endemic to British cinema: Redgrave's ex-schoolmaster winces over the painful memory of a sexy little boy with whom he was innocently (of course) involved in a scandal. Davis soldiers through as the musician who turns out to be merely a busker (albeit a remarkably prosperous one), but sadly succumbs.