Not Tonight, Darling is on a list headed “British Smut 1959-1979” on the website of arthouse streamer Mubi. Fair enough: the film is British, it’s from 1971 and the smut quotient is high. Though it does make claims to be more than just a movie for the “dirty mac” brigade, as the furtive masturbators in the UK’s suburban cinemas were called, with themes of voyeurism and alienation tucked inside a poignant drama about a failing marriage. Though strip out the nudity and is there anything much left at all?
Another claim to fame is that it’s the cinematic debut of Fiona Richmond, who became something of a fixture in Britporn of the 1970s and came as near as anyone in the business to achieving respectability. It’s a blink-and-miss her appearance, so Richmond fans should probably go elsewhere if they’re hoping to cop an eyeful. Instead the star is Luan Peters, playing Karen, a sexy young married whose husband is so intent on climbing the pole at work – he’s a lawyer in a big London firm – that he has no energy left for his stay-at-home wife. Karen and John have a son, though John’s lack of enthusiasm for sex is so clear that the child must have been some kind of accident.
What’s a sexually frustrated girl to do? The answer lies at the local grocer’s shop, where Karen is spotted one day by travelling salesman Alex (Vincent Ball). And before you can say “phwoar” he’s made a bet with shop assistant Eddie (Sean Barry-Weske) that he can bed Karen in three days.
And within three days he has. What Karen doesn’t know is that Alex has motives beyond getting her into bed. It’s not long before he’s dragging her along to a swingers party (here’s your Fiona Richmond glimpse) where he’ll secretly film Karen at (reluctant) play. Blackmail is the plan.
Voyeurism looms large. Husband John at a strip show (where he sees the stolen footage of his wife), the camera behind the mirror at the sex party, even at Alex’s initial bedding of Karen, when he turns on the lights to get a “proper” look at her. And us, of course, let’s not forget the audience if accusations of voyeurism are being chucked about. This does help explain the awkward cul de sac of a subplot about shop assistant Eddie ogling scantily clad Karen at night through binoculars, struggling all the while to keep the image of her sharp. What can all that fumbling with the focusing knob really represent?
In films of this era from the European mainland, sex is on the whole a liberating experience, something to be enjoyed. In Britporn it is often shameful and to be endured. That’s the case here. On the upside, Luan Peters looks good, in that “you don’t get many of those to the pound” way, as does Nicki Howorth, who plays Karen’s more sexually liberated confidante Joan. And they both put in excellent performances, as does Jason Twelvetrees as the unbearably prim John and so do Ball and Barry-Weske in their thankless portrayals of sleazy Alex and Eddie.
“Not tonight, darling” – a phrase associated with tired housewives giving a horny husband the brush-off – gets a feminist twist here. It’s the male who’s too tired for sex, or much of anything else. Thwarted female ambition and an almost Jean Dielman-esque focus on humdrum daily life is director Tony Sloman’s concern. A film critic who made a handful of films around this time, Sloman seems to want to be making a different sort of film, perhaps with a more Bergmanesque angle of attack.
But here we are. Still, there’s an appearance by the band Thunderclap Newman to enjoy, right around the moment when they made their only album, Hollywood Dream. Cue a scene of Karen and Alex digging their music, something the actors playing them clearly don’t dig at all. Kind of says it all.
Not Tonight, Darling – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
