[The characters in Shadows] are shadows because they are classless, rootless, virtually raceless, and hemmed in by an ideology of competitiveness which forces on the individual an individualism run mad and, faced with the "simple" things, can only despise or (which comes to the same thing) sentimentalise them.

The film is sometimes agonising (Lelia's disappointment after her first sexual experience: "I never knew love could be so awful!") but taken all in all its humour is too scathing, it has too much warmth, vitality and sense of friendship to be downbeat. On the contrary, its frankness has a truly liberating effect….

For here is a film with neither false aesthetic "distance" nor a forced lyricism; no formal "style" is allowed to impose an unreal dignity or coldness on the characters; even the comic relief is derived, realistically, from the story's emotional situations and not derived from them…. The...