Misbehaviour

Others in this impressive ensemble also shine, but this is where Misbehaviour’s strength is also its weakness.

While Rebecca Frayn and Gaby Chiappe’s script works hard to give all of its players dimension, such an overstuffed narrative tends to do the opposite, limping through sub-subplots and continually introducing new characters, leaving its main attractions to twist in the wind.

Misbehaviour says good riddance to a bad era in the brightest, politest way possible: too politely, perhaps, if you’re seeking a feminist comedy that actually lives up to the raucous promise of its title.

A memorable showdown from yesteryear is recalled in an enjoyable yet frustrating film that stubbornly refuses to pick a side.

Knightley and Mbatha-Raw headline an excellent band of British talent, but the film’s focus feels sadly misguided. There’s a great story within Misbehaviour — we just don’t get to see enough of it.

An attempt to tell this complicated intersectional story, and it does so with a comedic light-hearted style, sometimes appropriate, but sometimes inadequate to the possibilities inherent in the real-life event.

The jocular, amiable tone helps deliver the more serious social history lesson throughout, even if sometimes it feels like it’s shouting just a little too loudly to wake up the dimmer students at the back of the lecture hall.

If there is a tonal uncertainty in this comedy, then that’s because there was a tonal uncertainty in the real-life events, and the movie nicely conveys how they were at one and the same time deadly serious and Pythonically silly.