Secret Places

This is the dramatic side of such comedy classics as THE BELLES OF ST. TRINIAN'S (1955) and the three sequels that followed it. Set in a prim and proper British girls' school at the start of WW II, the story is too nice for its own good and so underplayed that it has little bite. Patience (Tara MacGowran) is an ugly duckling at the school. Her home life is dull, and the school provides what little excitement occurs in her bleak existence. Enter Laura Meister (Marie-Theres Relin, daughter of Maria Schell), a sophisticated refugee from Germany. Patience and Laura become best friends and develop a minor schoolgirl crush on each other. But the other girls at the school...