Prospect recommends: film

Economic strife has provided a gritty backdrop for notable Britflick hits The Full Monty (redundant steel workers) and Billy Elliot (the miners’ strike). Audiences evidently like their feel-good self-empowerment comedies with a side order of social relevance.

At first sight, Paramount’s Made In Dagenham, from Calendar Girls director Nigel Cole, is another twist on the formula: wife, mother and car-seat upholsterer Rita (Sally Hawkins) achieves personal growth when she enters the fractious realm of late-1960s industrial relations. The surprise is that the workplace dispute is no mere backdrop. The film really is about the strike at the Dagenham Ford car plant in 1968 that sparked the battle for equal pay for women in this country.

For this reason some of the giddier commercial projections may prove over-optimistic (not that we should worry about Paramount’s bottom line). But respect is due to the filmmakers and investors for a history lesson that doesn’t demean its characters or audience. Likeable Hawkins, who in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky rendered endearing one of the most irritating protagonists ever devised for the big screen, hits the ball out of the park with Rita, whose journey takes her from sewing machine to tea with Barbara Castle (Miranda Richardson). No stripping, though—perhaps it’s for the best they ditched the original title, We Want Sex.