Shirley Valentine (film) Shirley Valentine (film) Shirley Valentine is an award-winning 1989 British romantic comedy-drama film directed by Lewis Gilbert. The screenplay by Willy Russell is based on his 1986 one-character play of the same title, which follows middle aged Shirley Valentine in an unexpected discovery of herself, and rekindling of her childhood dreams and youthful love of life. Pauline Collins reprises the titular lead role as middle-aged housewife Shirley, which she had previously played in the stage production in London's West End and on Broadway, and Tom Conti plays Costas Dimitriades, the owner of a Greek tavern with whom she has a
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