Misbehaviour (12A)
Directed by Philippa Lowthorpe
 

THE 1970 Miss World protest by the newly formed Women’s Liberation Movement, which put them on the global map overnight, is immortalised and celebrated in this wonderfully entertaining yet poignant comedy drama.

The protesters, who infiltrated the televised beauty pageant as audience members, disrupted the proceedings live on air. They hurled flour bombs and fired a water pistol at the show’s host, the womanising “comedy legend” Bob Hope (Greg Kinnear), following his appalling sexist jokes and in protest at the demeaning way the competition treated and portrayed women.

With 100 million viewers it was one of the most popular TV shows in the world at the time and was considered must-see family viewing, impossible to believe now.

The film follows middle-class divorced single mother Sally Alexander (Keira Knightley) as she joins a group of female activists led by the radical Jo Robinson (a powerhouse Jessie Buckley) and reluctantly becomes the media face of the Women’s Lib organisation.

While they made history, so did the Miss World competition by featuring the first black contestant from South Africa (Loreece Harrison), admittedly due to pressure, and by crowning the first-ever woman of colour as the winner — Miss Grenada, Jennifer Hosten (Gugu Mbatha-Raw).

The drama makes it clear that the activists didn’t have a beef with the contestants but with the sexist and humiliating nature of the Miss World contest — in which the women paraded in swimsuits before an all-white salivating judging panel run by Julia (Keeley Hawes) and Eric Morley (Rhys Ifans, on comic form).

Yet the black contestants saw it as a great opportunity to appear on the world stage, achieve their dreams and inspire all the young black girls watching the show.

With a smart and witty script by Rebecca Frayn and Gaby Chiappe, superb direction by Philippa Lowthorpe and standout performances from its A-list cast, the film captures the sociopolitical landscape of that time and the growing strength of  the civil rights, gay rights and women’s liberation movements.

During the end credits, you see the real-life women who changed Miss World but who also fought for equal pay for equal work, childcare on demand and equal opportunities for education at the time.

Sadly, little seems to have changed.