The L-Shaped Room

Jane is French, young, pregnant and unmarried. She comes to London and takes the L-shaped attic room of a shabby boarding house in Notting Hill. She does not want a life with the baby's father and she is not considering an abortion, which in Britain at the time was illegal anyway. Everyone in the house has been left outside something: Johnny, the jazz musician downstairs, a retired music hall performer, two women in the basement. Jane grows close to Toby, who is trying to be a writer, but keeps the pregnancy from him. Bryan Forbes directs the British film; a hundred and twenty-six minutes, adapted from Lynne Reid Banks's novel. Leslie Caron plays Jane, winning a BAFTA and a Golden Globe for it and taking an Oscar nomination.