John Schlesinger’s Darling is the pure embodiment of swinging London in the 60s. In certain respects it plays like a time capsule, capturing and locked in a particular moment in time. In other ways it transcends its period, creating something that remains compelling and engaging, a film that seems at times to step out of itself and comment on the actions of the plot from the perspective of years or decades later. It’s a rare achievement.

There’s something very prescient about the way that Darling begins, with a poster of Diana Scott (Julie Christie) being pasted up over top of a charitable ad. 40 years later, this preoccupation with celebrity over matters of substance seems completely natural. Popular culture today is defined by an easily gained, highly disposable form of fame that is often void of any real meaning but nevertheless given more attention than the complex problems facing the world. There was a celebrity culture by 1965, of course, but it hadn’t completely saturated the media yet. Darling draws attention to this inevitable shift and by opening with these shots of the poster being pasted up, it establishes the ironic tone that will be carried through to the conclusion. Diana has problems but they aren’t real problems in comparison to the actual tragedies taking place around the world, and her difficulties will be entirely of her own making. Darling is highlighting that not only is her narrative false, but that viewing her as a tragic figure, as a victim, is false as well.

Her story begins, more or less, with her first meeting with Robert (Dirk Bogard), a television personality with whom she forms a friendship. Both are married but that doesn’t stop them from entering into an affair and, eventually, leaving their spouses in order to move in together. Their relationship is happy, at first, despite the jealousy she feels whenever he spends time with his children and estranged wife. Her jealousy, however, is really just a cover for the restlessness and boredom she feels. Her relationship with Robert was supposed to be exciting, a break from the domesticity and monotony of her marriage. Instead this new relationship just repeats the patterns established in the first and it comes to a similar end.

While still living with Robert, Diana gets involved with Miles (Lawrence Harvey), through whom she gains access to a glamorous and fast living crowd. Miles paves the way for Diana becoming the face of an advertising campaign and has no issue accepting her sexual favours, but he ultimately refuses to be pinned down by her. At every turn he makes it clear that she’s little more than a diversion to him and more often than not he abandons her at parties to go off with other women. Separated from Robert and more miserable than ever, she escapes to Italy to film a commercial where she finds herself pursued by an Italian prince (Jose Luis de Villalonga) whom she eventually marries. The marriage, like everything else in her life, fails to make her happy. It is as false and empty and she herself has become a figurehead, a symbolic wife purchased to make the picture of the family complete. Unfulfilled, she attempts to run away once again to something and someone else and discovers that she’s burned too many bridges and is all out of options.

As Diana, Christie renders a performance free of vanity. Physically Diana may always look perfect – she is, after all, all about image – but Christie and Schlesinger let us see beneath the veneer to the less than beautiful person that she actually is. She’s calculating and manipulative, a person incapable of giving love and incapable of being loved – she just can’t help but destroy whatever it is that she has at any given moment, certain that she’s missing out on something better. She has to keep moving because desire is all that there is to her personality; she’s all about wanting and is psychologically unable to cope with having. Christie captures this restlessness and even manages at times to make the audience feel for her, which should be impossible given how thoroughly she’s reaping what she’s sown. Christie brings that necessary element of humanity to Diana but manages to do so without sacrificing or softening the ugly edges of the character.

The film itself casts an ironic eye on Diana, the people she surrounds herself with, and the world that she wants to gain access to. There’s an emptiness to the carefully crafted debauchery of Miles’ world and a glitzy hollowness to the life of wealth and privilege she marries into that undercuts their alleged glamour. The film stands far outside the events it depicts, it sees Diana for what she is and it sees her desires for what they truly are. In its quiet way, Darling is actually quite brutal because it makes certain that no one leaves unscathed. This hardness has preserved the film, allowing it to remain compelling and interesting when other films its age now seem old fashioned and irrelevant.