Misbehaviour: Movie director Philippa Lowthorpe on Miss World, Apartheid, revolution and that bums shot

Philippa Lowthorpe (centre) with Loreece Harrison, Pearl Jansen, Jennifer Hosten and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Photo / Supplied

Sometimes there will be a scene in a movie that will just make you squirm and wish you could disappear.

There's a shot in new movie Misbehaviour that is deeply uncomfortable.

A row of women are lined up onstage, hair high, smiles plastered across their faces as the lights and seated audience glare at them. A man tells them to turn around, cheek-to-cheek, so everyone in the auditorium and on TV can get a good look at their swimsuit-clad bums.

The camera glides across, taking in a close-up shot of the arranged derrières. It seems to go on forever.

The female characters, who have names and personalities, are mortified and we, the 2020 audience, squirm. It is so gratuitous and seedy.

Usually when such a shot is included in a TV series or movie, it's because the director (almost always a man) wants to titillate the audience, appealing to base instincts, while women are reduced to nothing more than objects to be stared at.

Misbehaviour is in cinemas now. Photo / Supplied

Never mind their names, never mind their inner lives. That shot in Misbehaviour is designed to provoke exactly those uncomfortable feelings and make you confront your own complicity in the male gaze.

The film, set in 1970, is based on the true story of two revolutions that intersected during that year's Miss World pageant – the feminist liberation movement that spurred activists to protest the archaic institution, and the cultural revolution within it which saw two black women come first and second.

Keira Knightley plays activist Sally Alexander. Photo / Supplied

The bum shot was always in the script, Misbehaviour director Philippa Lowthorpe (The Crown, Call the Midwife) told news.com.au. And it was always supposed to be shocking and excruciating.

"We wanted to make people feel that uncomfortable," she said. "You've gotten to know these characters and you've gotten to love those fabulous contestants who are all really wonderful, gorgeous and funny characters.

"And then you see them reduced to just a body and that is a very shocking thing. We wanted to bring that home to the audience, that this is what we're doing to these people who are human beings. They're not a back and bottom in a swimsuit.

"By doing that scene, the objectification of women is brought home to you in such a startling way. So it was an important, but uncomfortable, thing to include."

The production didn't use any stunt or body doubles. Lowthorpe said the actors – including Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Suki Waterhouse and Loreece Harrison – wanted "to do that scene because they wanted to experience what it was for real".

"Showing people on the receiving end of the male gaze as well, it's really important in that film because it's one of the themes."

Misbehaviour is set during the real-life events of the 1970 Miss World. Photo / Supplied

Misbehaviour, a film that also counts among its cast Keira Knightley, Jessie Buckley, Lesley Manville and Keeley Hawes, Lowthorpe and screenwriters Gaby Chiappe and Rebecca Frayn, captures the bizarre world of beauty pageants and the winds of social change.

One half of the story belongs to the women activists – Sally Alexander (Knightley) and Jo Robinson (Buckley) – who organised protests against an institution that valued women as nothing more than a set of measurements.

Watch the trailer here:

The other half of the story belongs to the contestants – Miss Grenada Jennifer Hosten (Mbatha-Raw) and Miss Africa South Pearl Jansen (Harrison) – whose purpose in the Miss World pageant were not just to be admired as objects.

Jennifer wanted to show black girls that they could also be thought of as beautiful, while Pearl was the first black contestant entered by South Africa during the Apartheid era (a white contestant, named Miss South Africa, also competed).

Hosten and Jansen's success that year made international headlines.

When Lowthorpe encountered the story, she thought "this is a film that has to be made".

"It's a really fantastic confluence of all the politics – the women's liberation politics, the anti-Apartheid politics. It just felt like a brilliant microcosm of time to get your teeth into and explore."

When Lowthorpe first signed up, the production was already in touch with the real-life Hosten, Alexander and Robinson, but they hadn't yet located Jansen.

"We really wanted to find the real Pearl and make sure we heard her story. We did, and then I spent many hours on the phone chatting to her about her experiences and bringing that into the script, making sure it's really as truthful and authentic as it can be," Lowthorpe said.

"She was so surprised [to hear from us] and then a little wary at first. But when she knew what we wanted to do, she was really excited because she went back to South Africa after Miss World and just went back to her normal life under Apartheid.

"She really only got to do what she wanted to do when she was in her 50s."

In September 2019, Misbehaviour had a screening that brought back together the women whose stories it tells.

"We flew Pearl over from South Africa, and for the first time in 50 years, she came back to the UK. She saw the film and had a fantastic chat to the liberation women who were there with their families as well," Lowthorpe said.

"And she enjoyed herself so much. It was a pretty emotional reunion, actually."

Lowthorpe recalled sitting with the feminist activists in their kitchen, hearing them talk about the night they crashed Miss World 1970, made a fool of lecherous host Bob Hope, and drew attention to the glaring sexism on display.

"I listened to them talk about what inspired them at that time, how they felt as young women, the urgency of what they felt and also what it was like," she said.

"What they did was amazing to get women's liberation on the map – plotting this escapade was just so witty and behind that were very serious demands for equal rights, equal pay for equal work. But they chose this very, very witty and wild way of doing it."

Lowthorpe hopes the film will bring a greater understanding of the work women's liberation activists did in the 1970s to bring about change, even if that work is incomplete.

"We need to be vocal as women, we need to say when things are wrong. There's still so much to do for women's rights all over the world."