During the first 20 minutes or so one has the impression that two women - Audrey Cooke and Daniela Nardini - are bent on showing off or showing up macho behaviour in general, but specifically in this film among junior army officials. This, together with the opening impression of seeing a British version of `G.I. Jane', was enough to cause one's eyeballs to roll upwards beneath limpid lids. However, `Rough Treatment' is neither a macho scapegoat nor a second-hand version of Demi Moore doing her heroic feminist thing in an evidently masculine-dominated armed forces scenario. Though it does get a bit close: Nardini has to jump into rivers and carry out other bravura acts in order to return to camp without being caught, her prize being sexually assaulted a posteriori.
After recuperation and rehabilitation, Eve Turner sets about planning her revenge, as if she were a female version of Le Comte de Monte Cristo, though she does not take thirty years over it.
Daniela Nardini puts in quite a good performance, as do the rest of the cast, with that nonchalance so typical of British TV productions, such that nothing really stands out greatly. In the middle of having to be tough in the army world, perhaps most of her tears were out of place. Even so, one cannot really feel sorry for her; one cannot feel hatred towards those who abused her; this was probably Audrey Cooke's intentions, and thus she steered clear of unnecessary sentimentalisations, with the result that the film profits by it and more or less stays on the rails. Mind you, the rails have some rather strange bends in them.
Made by Carlton Television, part of ITV, the film glues itself to the British habit of not giving away any secrets about where it is filmed. Just about anywhere from the Cotswolds to the flat, cold, bleak lands of Northern East Anglia or Eastern Lincolnshire; I´ve only got the scenery and the sound of seagulls to go on. Late autumn and into winter: I hope Ms. Nardini did not get pneumonia from jumping into that river .......
Barely 6 out of 10 on my scale.
