Other Titles • Educating Rita • Rita will es endlich wissen (1984)
Synopses for Educating Rita (1983)
1.
Academy Award®-winner Michael Caine* along with Julie Walters earned well-deserved 1983 Oscar® nominations (Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively) for their outstanding performances in this brilliant, bittersweet comedy. Walters is Rita, a working-class woman seeking the path to self-discovery. Bored with her life as a hairdresser, and under pressure from her husband to start a family, she enrolls in literature tutorials at a British university determined to better herself. Caine is Frank Bryant, the disillusioned English professor who is assigned to teach her. While Frank watches Rita embark on a radical transformation, his own life takes on a different kind of transformation as he finds himself falling in love with Rita while sinking into the depths of his alcoholism. Earning a third Oscar® nomination for its screenplay by William Russell (based on his play), Educating Rita is a very funny, very charming and thoroughly entertaining film.
(28 votes)
2.
Dr. Frank Bryant (Michael Caine) is an alcoholic professor of literature headed for dire straits. Rita is a frustrated young housewife filled with wanderlust. When the two meet as student and teacher, no lecture hall can contain their attraction for one another. As Rita engages her teacher in a fuzzy romance, she matures and discovers a new side of herself, but in the end she must choose either her marriage or the magnetic Dr. Bryant.
EDUCATING RITA reunites director Lewis Gilbert with star Michael Caine--they previously worked together in the 1966 drama ALFIE--and once again their collaboration is staggering. Bryant's shortcomings as a drunk and a womanizer are detestable, yet still Gilbert allows viewers to empathize with his character. In EDUCATING RITA, Gilbert once again demonstrates that he is not only a master of commanding the camera but a master at deconstructing the human heart as well.
(25 votes)
3.
Michael Caine and the knockout Julie Walters deliver a pair of wonderful performances in this endearingly bittersweet tale of a boozily burnt-out professor's tutoring of (and subsequent tutoring by) a free-spirited hairdresser determined to improve her lot in life. The basic plot won't exactly surprise anyone who's ever seen a movie before but the ace cast (particularly Caine, who's rarely this subtle) continually finds new directions to spin off from the rather rote path. Although the end result is perhaps just a little too convinced of its own adorability to attain classic status, this remains a rarity in the genre--a feel-good film that earns its emotions honestly. A nice change of pace for director Lewis Gilbert, who is perhaps better known for his contributions to the James Bond series. --Andrew Wright
(22 votes)
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