Educating Rita (film) Educating Rita (film) Educating Rita is a British 1983 drama/comedy film directed by Lewis Gilbert with a screenplay by Willy Russell based on his 1980 stage play. The film stars Michael Caine, Julie Walters, and Maureen Lipman. It won multiple major awards for best actor and best actress and was nominated for three Academy Awards. Caine and Walters both won BAFTA and Golden Globe awards for best actor and actress. The British Film Institute ranked "Educating Rita" the 84th greatest British film of the 20th century. A Liverpudlian working-class young hairdresser Rita (Julie Walters) wants to better herself by studying
Woman's film film is the motif of escape. Woman's films allow their respective female protagonists to escape their everyday lives and their socially and sexually prescribed roles. The escape can take the form of a journey to another place such as the USSR in "Letter to Brezhnev" (1985) and Greece in "Shirley Valentine" (1989) or education as in "Educating Rita" (1983) and sexual initiation as in "Wish You Were Here" (1987). The beginnings of the genre can be traced back to D. W. Griffith, whose one- and two-reelers "A Flash of Light" (1910) and "Her Awakening" (1911) feature the trademark narratives of