The Greengage Summer

Before Gilbert descended to mush like Friends and Paul and Michelle, he made a number of interesting failures, of which this is probably one of the best. Susannah York, in one of her best performances, plays a young schoolgirl holidaying in France, where she falls in love with an Englishman, a mysterious older man (More). The main problem is that the plot degenerates into silly dramatics at the expense of character development, with More turning out to be - of all things - a jewel thief. (From the novel by Rumer Godden.