The power of evocation

'Late Flowering Lust' with Nigel Hawthorn. https://youtu.be/jtA-GC6sowk

A magnificent and tragic look in the mirror - Betjeman at his most human - a superb performance by Nigel Hawthorne. A wonderful and masterly treasure - (and a nice Ford Zephyr. I'd rented one, aged 18, to bowl over a glorious young lady who's heart I was hoping to win by driving her home to Maidenhead after our date). It didn't work.

Regrets, joys, tears and most precious fragmented memories. Although we're not our circumstances, Betjeman can make some of us feel as if we are.

To me - profoundly touching. John Betjeman 1906 - 1984, like Shakespeare, Byron and many, many others - he knew.

I can't remember how I came across this gem, but this delightful and poignant film brought me a wonderful basket of intensely personal mixed emotions and then stirred them. During the last couple of days I must have watched it three or four times. Each time it's provoked happiness, sadness, joys regrets and hopes.

Unlike many formidable films that I've seen this past year from China, Russia, France, Mexico, Japan, Iran and other nations - films that have opened deep doors that I'd forgotten were there - some secret - and many of which have shared marvellous dramas, insights and extraordinary insights with me, "Late Flowering Lust" feels like a gem to me. It's strangely slight, a glorious ballet, and yet its light touch has evoked the texture of my life from my youth right up to this moment.