Critics reviews

Within the brutal, grey trappings of the post-war British working-class, Poor Cow produces an authorial female subject, one that shuns the binds of sex, class and narrative representation, and ventures a charged enunciation of female desire.

It’s rumoured that Poor Cow is not a film Loach himself favours. It’s definitely an individual rather than a collective view, which makes it unusual when compared with some of his later films, but it is also romantic, sexy and emotionally devastating.

The acting all round is as naturalistic and compelling as you would expect from Loach’s television work, but White – the Battersea Bardot – stands out as a brilliant and compelling performance.

Every face that appears on screen tells a story. There's an amazing amount of colour in Poor Cow, and its profoundly grim social-realist style causes the film to double as a melancholic documentary portrait of the craggy-faced have-nots and doled-up strumpets whose impossible dreams are pacified by booze, fags and egg sarnies.

It may not have the emotional intensity of Loach’s very finest work – that would come with ‘Kes’, two years later. But ‘Poor Cow’ is a remarkable film, a time-capsule character study of great warmth and compassion.

Ultimately, Poor Cow is a strange contrast of styles... Overall, however, this is an upbeat and humorous portrayal of working class strife in the Sixties which, while pulling no punches, chooses not to dwell on the negative aspects.

Loach apparently doesn't have an attitude, however, and seems unable to decide what his story of Poor Cow means. This confusion is buried beneath technique and permissiveness. He plays with his camera and lets his actors run wild.

Despite the aggressive realism of the pre-credits sequence in which a placenta-covered baby emerges screaming from the womb, despite the social criticism implicit in the slum interiors and in the shots of identical rows of surburban houses, and despite the working-class authenticity of the dialogue, Loach's direction - like Brian Probyn's Eastman Colour photography - suffuses the material in a cheery glow of lyricism that often verges on sentimentality.

What I hated the most about the film was the tiresomely obvious documentary shots constantly thrown in to emphasise the ugliness of our couple’s surroundings. Every time they cut from our hero and heroine, it’s to somebody old or wrinkled, or scarred or blemished or gross... Unrelenting black is just as trivial as constant rosiness: in Poor Cow we get both.

Loach’s outstanding gift is a rare one – he has a quite astonishing rapport with actors. He has carried this talent over to the big screen, getting a marvellously warm and likeable portrait from Carol White.

It is Carol White’s film, and she scores with a flow of varied emotion, ranging from fetching happiness to a sudden spurt of tears in the final minutes...