Here's a charming British coming-of-age film, little known in America, but good enough to have been voted the thirtieth best British film ever by the members of the British Film Institute. I concur with that assessment, give or take a few positions on the list. Gregory's Girl (1981) was the first commercially supported film for Scottish director Bill Forsyth. Every review I've come across for this film, on the internet, raves about it.

Historical Background: Scottish director William David ("Bill") Forsyth was born on July 29th, 1946, in Glasgow, Scotland. He quit high school to take a job at a local film company, making documentaries and other films for industry. At the same time, he began making experimental shorts, using scraps of unused film stock from the company. After completing film school, Forsyth saved up $10,000 to make his feature debut, That Sinking Feeling (1979), keeping costs down by drawing on the volunteer services of friends and a local theater group. The modest venture made enough of a splash at festivals in Edinburgh and London to win Forsyth commercial backing for his next undertaking, the present film, Gregory's Girl (1981). Made at a cost of just £300,000, it nevertheless won the British Academy Award for best original screenplay. It also had success in the American art-house circuit. Forsyth's next film, Local Hero (1983), was his most successful film to date, earning Forsyth a British Academy Award for Best Director. Forsyth also had some success with Comfort and Joy (1984). After moving to Hollywood, however, Forsyth has made eight films without much acclaim.

The Story: Gregory (John Gordon Sinclair) is an awkward, gangly teenager in Scotland in the 1980's, no longer in full command of his body after a five-inch growth spurt. His soccer coach, Phil Menzies (Jake D'Arcy), moves him from the wing position to goalie, where his lack of coordination will be less of a drawback for the school's woeful soccer team. When Menzies then holds tryouts for the open position on the team, the simultaneously luminous and athletic Dorothy (Dee Hepburn) easily beats out the male candidates and is soon the team's star player. She also quickly becomes a star twinkling in the eye of nearly all of the sex-obsessed lads of the school, including Gregory and Eric (Alan Love), the photographer for the school's newspaper. Meanwhile, a couple of Gregory's nerdy pals, Andy (Robert Buchanan) and Charlie (Graham Thompson), are so hopelessly starved of female companionship that they are seriously contemplating running off to Caracas, where, Andy has heard, there's an eight-to-one female-to-male ratio.

Despite some heady coaching from his super-precocious ten-year-old sister, Madeline (Allison Forster), Gregory has little likelihood of securing Dorothy, who is seriously out of his league. She's dating a nineteen-year-old and has no need for an acne-marred, giraffe-like dork, such as Gregory. Fortunately, the girls in this school are a good deal more realistic than the boys about who should match up with whom, and Gregory gets skillfully passed along, like a baton in a relay race, from Dorothy to Carol (Caroline Guthrie) to Margo (Carol Macartney) to Susan (Clare Grogan), who's had her eye on Gregory all along. Gregory is so delighted to have acquired female attention of any kind that he barely notices how skillfully his ardor has been totally redirected by the feminine conspiracy.

Themes: I can still remember that day, as a freshman in high school, when I discovered that almost every guy in my high school class was in love with the same girl. There was this one radiantly gorgeous, blond in our class, Sue N., who was also personable, friendly, more than averagely intelligent, and a gymnast with perfect physique. Every guy, no matter how dumpy or dorky, imagined that she was meant to be his, if only she would take notice of how worthy he was. It took about 2-3 years for reality to set in and for more realistic pairings to start to emerge. Most of the girls in the school had more realistic notions about the kind of guy they could land and planned accordingly. That difference in contact with reality is essentially what Gregory's Girl is all about. It's a real trip, watching the hormone driven infatuations of adolescence gradually sort themselves out into sensible pairings, mostly by the initiative of the fair sex. I might add, in relation to my own experiences, that Sue N. was still the picture of perfection when I went back to my thirtieth high school reunion, still stunningly attractive and the envy of all of the other women in the class. Had it been otherwise, I would have interpreted the calamity as a collapse of the universal order.

Production Values: The joy of this film comes not from the narrative per se but from the witty dialog and the preciously awkward situations, very much like those we all remember, except funnier. One of the more "worldly" boys (he's a high graduate with a real job – washing windows) says of Gregory's sister, Madeline, "She's only ten, but she has the body of a woman of thirteen." That's typical of the Forsyth one-liners that make this film a delight. In another scene, when the headmaster asks coach Menzies if he's made provisions for a secure shower arrangement for the soccer team's new female member, the feckless coach replies, "Oh, she'll bring her own soap." Gregory tells the ten-year-old lad who's courting Madeline that he's pushing things a bit, adding, "You'll run out of vices before you're twelve." Forsyth also tosses in a rich variety of pleasant diversions from the main storyline, including an unidentified person wandering the hallways of the school in a penguin outfit, a father who works as a driving instructor, and a rather eccentric headmaster, who derives his joy from eating jelly donuts and tickling the piano keys. The core topics of the film, however, are the yearnings and confusions of youthful infatuation.

The cinematography is mostly straightforward, but occasionally rises to the sublime, especially during a segment late in the film in which Gregory and his newly acquired girlfriend Susan are lying on the grass in a park, on their backs, writhing about as though they were dancing. The backdrop for that scene is a gorgeous, velvet-colored sky at dusk.

John Gordon Sinclair (who sometimes reverses the order of his first two names) finds a balance between teen angst and comedic awkwardness that keep us thoroughly in his corner, despite lacking very much of what one might call physical appeal. Sinclair worked again for Forsyth in Local Hero. Robert Buchanan is also delightful as the desperate-to-score fifteen-year-old, Andy. Buchanan had already worked in That Sinking Feeling (1979) when he participated in the present film. The female leads are a good deal more physically appealing than the males. Dee Hepburn plays the part of the knockout, Dorothy, giving her depth and substance to go with the pretty face and athletic body. Hepburn has apparently not since pursued much of a career in acting. Clare Grogan takes the part of the overlooked ugly duckling, who finally transforms into a swan, near the film's end. She has the sweetest scenes of the film, paired with Sinclair, and handles them convincingly. Grogan later appeared in Comfort and Joy (1984). Among the adults in the film, Jake D'Arcy is a standout as the coach, Phil Menzies. He exhibits a real talent for physical humor.

Bottom-Line: The MGM DVD for this film provides an excellent anamorphically enhanced digital transfer, with a rich color palette. You have a choice of soundtracks in English or the original Scottish and subtitles in English, French, and Spanish. I recommend listening to the film in the original Scottish with English subtitles on. You'll have to set both manually, since the film comes preset to the dubbed English alternative. The only extra on the DVD is the theatrical trailer. This film is a classic example of an under-appreciated film, given that relatively few movie lovers know about it, but those that do invariably praise it no end. I highly recommend it.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12