review for Girl With Green Eyes on AllMovie

Girl With Green Eyes is a small, quiet little gem of a picture. It's not a great, life-changing "drama for the ages," but it's a haunting small film that lingers pleasantly in the mind long after the last frame. Desmond Davis' directorial debut is surprisingly assured; it straddles the worlds of 1960s British kitchen-sink realism and the French nouvelle vague and yet manages to reconcile the differences between these two schools into a coherent whole. There's a refreshing poetry to Girl, both in the simple language and in the visual compositions that Davis employs. It's a poetry that both wounds and heals. The screenplay does a fine job of setting up its situations, establishing its characters, and then letting things head where they need to go. Best of all, Girl gives us the delicious Rita Tushingham in one of her best roles, full of both life and delicacy and coming across as charming without ever being artificial. Peter Finch is a bit off his form, but Lynn Redgrave is right on the money all the way through. Girl With Green Eyes is a lovely film whose flaws are easily forgiven.