Olivia

One of the best things about Olivia is that men ain’t shit. It features an entirely female cast of characters. Not once does a man get to share his opinion on the goings on because there are no men to be found. In fact, I’m pretty sure there is only one male character this whole movie and it’s a dog. And what a good dog! Definitely my favourite character. Olivia certainly gets extra points in my book for just having this big, sweet mastiff dog just hanging around, waiting to be petted.

The film is about a girls’ boarding school because even back in the day, everyone knew those places were gay as hell. Olivia is a new student from England. She soon finds that the other students have divided themselves into camps based on which teacher they fancy. The first of these teachers is Mlle Cara, a dramatic invalid who enjoys the girls doting on her. The other is Mlle Julie, the headmistress. Olivia ends up in the Mlle Julie camp. Unlike the other girls though, Mlle Julie has feelings for Olivia, though she tries her best not to act on them. In addition to the inherent drama of teacher/student homosexual attraction, life gets even more difficult as Mlle Cara becomes jealous of the attention Olivia and the others have for Mlle Julie.

Olivia is very similar to Madchen in Uniform. Both stories are vintage WLW movies about teacher/student relationships at boarding schools. However, there is a slight tonal different to how it portrays relationships. In Madchen, the relationship between teacher and student is portrayed as a straightforward romance. Olivia is a little more complex. The romance itself is bound into psychology and power dynamics. In Madchen it felt like the two characters loved each other in spite of being teacher and student. Whereas in Olivia, it’s clear that the affections stem from the teacher/student dynamic.

I certainly didn’t expect this much understanding of how power dynamics affect a relationship from a movie in 1951. It was a pleasant surprise. Arguably, one could say that Olivia spends too much time justifying why these characters would have attraction to each other. But personally, I thought it added another layer to the characters. In Madchen, the teacher quite suddenly finds herself in love with a student despite having no history if similar behaviour. In Olivia, there is groundwork for both Mlle Julie and Cara potentially doing so. They both have aspects of their personality that might predispose them to fall in love with a student in their charge.

While I think the film is good, please note that this movie is old and has old-timey pacing. If a movie released today had the same script and pacing, I would have a problem. Olivia can be a bit slow. Lots of scenes are meant to establish the atmosphere of this boarding school but don’t advance the main plot at all. There’s a lot of the students’ day to day which wasn’t the most fascinating. Still, these day-to-day scenes were usually the ones where my favourite character, the big dog made an appearance.

Olivia is an unusual film. It is one of the oldest WLW films I know of and was directed by a woman. As such, the film has great female characters and understanding of women and girls. It also had a surprisingly good grasp of the psychology as to why a teacher and student might fall in love. As much as the movie might be a bit slow, it’s still fascinating in its very existence. Plus, there’s a very good dog!

Overall rating: 8/10

Other WLW films in similar genres