I really enjoy film projects that recreate lesser-known moments of history and bring them to life on screen.  This particular drama, the British film Misbehaviour, recounts feminist protests made surrounding the 1970 Miss World pageant in London, hosted by Bob Hope.  I was completely unaware of this little episode of history, which touched off the women’s liberation movement in Britain, probably because I was just 9 when it all went down.

Philippa Lowthorpe’s film sets the scene by depicting how difficult things were for women in 1970, how beholden to men they still were (and in many cases, still are).  But young unwed mother Sally Alexander (Keira Knightley) manages to make it into a prestigious college, where she learns that sexism (a newly coined term) is prevalent and dominating.  She befriends a few radical women who empower her to protest the status quo more vigorously, culminating in a protest at the Miss World competition.

The movie confirms that times were a’changing, with the introduction of black contestants into the competition, and international judges who could provide a greater pedigree for the pageant, even as the swimsuit section remained uncomfortably sexual.  The protestors are seen as angry yet still supportive of the women’s chance for genuine opportunity.  Violence is hinted at (if the protestors did today what they did then they probably wouldn’t have made it out of the theater alive), yet the film supports their every move wholeheartedly, since, as Dolores Hope (Lesley Manville) notes, “Nobody was hurt.  Nobody died.”

The Bob Hope material is the real oddity of this unbalanced drama.  Hope is portrayed by the miscast Greg Kinnear, in an uneven portrayal of a serial womanizer and louse, unwilling to change with the times.  It seems to me that Hope’s casual misogyny stands in for the rest of the male species, which is not fair to him and doesn’t serve the film particularly well.  At least his wife gets the last laugh.  It also seems to me that the film downgrades some of its historically rich material in favor of the protest angle, when it could have been more comprehensive in its coverage of a specific moment in time when things actually did begin to change for the better.  ☆ ☆ 1/2.  12 July 2021.