The Education of Jane Cumming review sexuality, race and a real school scandal

"Lillian Hellman's stage play The Children's Hour filmed by William Wyler in 1961 with Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn is the well-known, earnest story of two women teaching at a private girls' school whose lives are ruined by a pupil's malicious accusation of homosexuality: it's one of the earliest Hollywood movies to tiptoe around the existence of gay people, albeit clearly permitted to exist on the understanding that the people involved are really not gay."

"But until this moment I knew nothing about the real-life libel case from 19th-century Scotland on which it was based, which in 2013 was the subject of a study by LGBT scholar Lillian Faderman entitled Scotch Verdict: The Real-Life Story That Inspired The Children's Hour. It's Faderman's book which inspired this exhilaratingly candid, intelligent new movie from the German director and co-writer Sophie Heldman: a modestly budgeted film which is all about the writing and the intimate performances."

"It has vigour and clarity, combined with a frank acknowledgment of sex and sexuality. It makes The Children's Hour look prissy and mealy mouthed. Marianne Woods (Clare Dunne) and Jane Pirie (played by the film's co-screenwriter Flora Nicholson) are two women who run a private girls' school in Edinburgh in 1810. They are thrilled, if a little nervous, by a financial and social coup."

A German director adapts a real 19th-century Scottish libel case into a modestly budgeted, writing-focused film. The story follows Marianne Woods and Jane Pirie, two women who run a private girls' school in Edinburgh in 1810, whose lives are disrupted by the arrival of three fee-paying pupils, including Jane Cumming, a mixed-race girl. The film foregrounds intimate performances from Clare Dunne, Flora Nicholson and Fiona Shaw, and presents a frank acknowledgment of sex and sexuality. It combines vigour and clarity while portraying bullying, social ambition, and the destructive consequences of malicious accusations.

Read at www.theguardian.com