"The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there."

Loyalty and forbidden love over a Victorian summer

IT might be said that, for his portrayal of Michael Fitzhubert in Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), little could have better prepared Dominic Guard than his title characterisation of The Go-Between. Just as Michael feels implacable duty to a blonde, ethereal muse, Miranda, Leo Colston is captivated by Marian Maudsley (Julie Christie), as he dispatches her correspondence to her lover, Ted Burgess (Alan Bates). Leo, like Michael, fluctuates between reticence and obsession, prescribed inhibitions enticed by false and implausible unions.  If, then, certain of the figures in Picnic and The Go-Between are curiously parallel, then so, too, are their broader narratives - both are set in 1900, examining themes of temptation, ambivalence and forbidden desire, amid stifling conservatism and incorrigible social pride.

The seminal opening line, "The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there", is as much a throwaway reminiscence as an aphoristic foreground to the story of reluctance, action and regret that ensues. The film conveys both the recollections of the older Leo and the experiences of the younger, these first words variously a lyrical hypothesis and a would-be evaluation.