The Romantic Englishwoman

The Romantic Englishwoman is a 1975 British film directed by Joseph Losey and starring Michael Caine, Glenda Jackson, Helmut Berger. It marks the feature-length screen debut for Kate Nelligan. The screenplay was written by Tom Stoppard and Thomas Wiseman, based on the novel by the same title by Thomas Wiseman.

Caine plays a successful English novelist whose discontented wife, played by Jackson, decides to take a holiday to Germany in order to "find herself". There she meets a mysterious young man, played by Berger, in an elevator, which initiates an often bizarre, but extremely mature examination of desire, responsibility and the nature of love.

The film was shown at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, but not entered into the main competition.

Plot
Elizabeth, bored wife of Lewis, a successful pulp writer in England, leaves husband and child and runs away to the German town of Baden-Baden. There she meets Thomas, who claims to be a poet but whom viewers know to be a petty thief, conman, drug courier, and gigolo. Though the two are briefly attracted to each other, she returns home. He, hunted by gangsters for a drug consignment he has lost, follows her to England. Lewis, highly suspicious of his wife, invites the young man to stay with them and act as his secretary. Initially resenting the presence of the handsome stranger, Elizabeth one night starts an affair and, after being caught together in the conservatory by Lewis, the two run away with no money to the south of France. Lewis follows them, he in turn being followed by the gangsters looking for Thomas. At the end the gangsters reclaim Thomas, presumably for execution, while Lewis reclaims Elizabeth.

Cast

 * Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth Fielding
 * Michael Caine as Lewis Fielding
 * Helmut Berger as Thomas
 * Michael Lonsdale as Swan, chief gangster
 * Béatrice Romand as Catherine, nanny
 * Kate Nelligan as Isabel, friend of the Fieldings
 * Nathalie Delon as Miranda
 * Reinhard Kolldehoff as Herman
 * Anna Steele as Annie
 * Marcus Richardson as David
 * Julie Peasgood as New Nanny
 * Frankie Jordan as Supermarket Cashier
 * Tom Chatto as Neighbour
 * Frances Tomelty as Airport Shop Assistant

Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 80% based on 5 reviews, with an average rating of 6/10. AllMovie gave the film 3-and-a-half-stars-out-of-5.

Home media
The Romantic Englishwoman was released on DVD and Blu-ray in North America by Kino Lorber on June 21, 2011.