698 Lace

First  viewed : 9  September  1984

Here's  another  that  slipped  through  the  net  earlier.  Lace  was  a  two  part  adaptation  of  Shirley  Conran's  bestseller.  It  was  necessarily  bowdlerised  , the  Arab  prince's  penchant  for  slipping  goldfish  into  intimate  places  had  to  be   jettisoned  for  instance.  The  story  is  utter  hokum, three  schoolgirls  ( played  by  overaged  actresses ) at  a  Swiss  finishing  school  in  1960  have  illicit  liaisons   with  older  men  and  one  gets  pregnant. They  assume  joint  responsibility  for  this  and  drop  the  baby  girl, Lilli,  in  for  adoption. The  adoptive  parents  are  killed  in  Hungary  and  the  six  year  old  girl  goes  into  a  Hungarian  work  camp  ( in  1966 ? really ? ) . She  eventually  escapes  and  goes  to  Paris  where  she  works  her  way  up  from  whore  to  film  star  remarkably  quickly  then  calls  the  three  successful  career  women  together  to  pose  the  infamous  question "Which  one  of  you  bitches  is  my  mother ?"

  A  young  Phoebe  Cates  played  Lilli   and  certainly  looked  the  part  but  was  in  trouble  the  moment  she  opened  her  mouth. The  three  women  Brooke  Adams, Bess  Armstrong  and  Arielle  Dombasie  were  better  but  only  by  comparison. Slumming  Brits  in  it  included  Nikolas  Grace, Leigh  Lawson, Trevor  Eve  and  Annette  Badland.