[2] Based on a 1928 novella by D. H. Lawrence, published posthumously in 1930, the film follows Yvette, who with her sister Lucille, returns from the relative freedom of a French finishing school to their home, a gloomy rectory in the Midlands.

There is immediate tension with her father, a pedantic country rector, her prim maiden aunt Cissie, and her aged grandmother who insidiously rules the house with a rod of matriarchal iron.

Returning to the encampment the following week, she meets a neighbour Mrs Fawcett and her lover Major Eastwood; their obvious defiance of social convention appeals to Yvette, and they become close friends.

[5][6] In 1969 Miles was introduced to Dimitri de Grunwald, who had set up London Screen, whose method of film financing was based on the European model rather that the American one.

This meant that the leading actress, Joanna Shimkus, a Canadian who had just started her film career in Paris, along with Franco Nero, who by then was well known in Italy, fitted into Dimitri’s plans for Pan-European production finance.

Some also recognised the almost fable-like quality of the main characters, which were archetypes of the weak father and uncle, against the malevolent strength of the grand-mother, all trying unsuccessfully to dominate and stop the flowering of the young virgin herself.

[16] The film critic of The Times of London, John Russell Taylor, asked Christopher Miles at the press screening if he had seen the USA Trade reviews.

Miles said he hadn't, and Russell Taylor told him not to worry as he had made a "film of much quiet distinction, a highly literate and sympathetic adaptation of the original... excellent performances... as the period background is beautifully, because unobtrusively, captured".

[19] Ian Christie of the Daily Express wrote, ”Christopher Miles has turned this short novel into a work that distils visual poetry”[20] and Judith Crist of the New York Magazine wrote “The screenplay by Alan Plater is nothing short of masterly in putting those ‘final revisions’ on Lawrence’s sketchy story... and the director has an outstanding gift for visual summation... besides Miss Shimkus, who loveliness has a unique and penetrating quality, there are fine performances from Honor Blackman and Mark Burns who know the difference between appetite and desire... and Franco Nero, as the outrageously handsome gypsy the embodiment of every girl’s dream of the noble savage”.

Kauffmann wasn't impressed with Joanna Shimkus acting saying 'this faded story of life-hungry revolt might have made tolerable period piece if the heroine had been well played.