Architecture of adolescence: the suburban landscapes of I Start Counting
With intriguing echoes of The Offence and Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, the 1970 British thriller I Start Counting stars a young Jenny Agutter and tells of a spate of murders occurring in a rapidly modernising English town.
14 April 2021
I Start Counting (1970)
Mixing a daring coming-of-age narrative with a sleazy murder mystery, the British thriller I Start Counting (1970) represents an unusual amalgamation of genres. Featuring an early role for Jenny Agutter, in the same year as her breakthrough in The Railway Children, it concerns Wynne, a Catholic schoolgirl living in Bracknell whose life is beginning to get complicated. Aside from harbouring sadness over the move from her old cottage to a modern flat, she’s grappling with a mixture of guilt, curiosity and uncertainty over her feelings for her much older, adoptive brother George (Bryan Marshall).