Just glancing through the couple of dozen IMDb reviews for this film, it is clear that there are as many 'hates' as 'loves' and almost nobody who thinks its just okay. A 'Marmite' movie you might say and perhaps with good reason. Why did I sit watching with a grin on my face throughout and a warm feeling despite some of the undoubted silliness and such a strange and varied performance from Candy-like Genevieve Waite? Almost inexplicable and yet there is something inherently charming and likeable abut something clearly created with much love that refuses to conform to one's expectations. Take the performance of Donald Sutherland. It is crazy. He is trying to be some blue-blooded English aristo but he can't really even do an ordinary English accent that well. It sounds like a joke impersonation complete with stuttering and elongated vowels but it is clear that he is having the time of his life. It is a wonderful performance through which it seems the viewer is glimpsing something of the actual person, despite the non traditional acting style (or because of it). There are some beautifully shot scenes, some mind boggling dialogue, lots of pretty girls and absolutely stacks of even prettier clothes. The music is varied and well selected and all in all the movie seemed to me a sheer delight. Sarne showed great promise here and the movie was not a disaster, that was the fate of his next (Myra Breckinridge - which I also liked) and that was it for the poor guy. Great shame but at least we have this perfect gem of a souvenir from that funny old year,1968.

This is a fairly typical English "Swinging 60's" movie.

Only there isn't a lot of swinging.

In fact, there isn't much at all.

So many films like this were made back then it takes something special to differentiate one from another and this sure didnt get pas the clutter.

It's a rather pedestrian rambling boring movie with little to recommend.

Michael Sarne wrote and directed this odd, sometimes-charming, sometimes-not chronicle of a wide-eyed art student in '60s London who falls in with a decadent crowd. Helium-voiced Genevieve Waite is like a cross between Anne Heche and Shirley Temple. She has fantasies of bathing nude in a pond full of lilies and being dried off by her girlfriend dressed as a maid, and later one featuring the same friend being strangled by her lover. "Joanna" is incongruous: Sarne is in love with old-fashioned trappings and modern techniques. Some of his shots are delectable (Waite crossing a bridge at sunset, or running down a pathway lined with trees),but the film's eye-candy needs something substantial to go with it. As to Waite's Joanna, I never understood the leading character or felt anyone on-screen did either (at one point, the girlfriend says to Joanna, "I don't sleep around as much as you do", but we never get the impression that Joanna is promiscuous--she seems only to want true love). Donald Sutherland gives the film's only solid performance as a fey Lord and the sharp, canny editing keeps the picture popping. Otherwise, the movie is just a mod bauble, and only a hint of true cleverness is left behind. ** from ****