The Buttercup Chain is a 1970 British drama film directed by Robert Ellis Miller and starring Hywel Bennett, Jane Asher, and Leigh Taylor-Young. It was entered into the 1970 Cannes Film Festival. The film is an adaptation of the 1967 novel of the same title by Janice Elliott. It was shot at Shepperton Studios and on location in England, Sweden and Spain. The film's sets were designed by the veteran art director Wilfred Shingleton.
Plot
France and Margaret are cousins, born on the same day to twin sisters. They grow up feeling a bond as if brother and sister. When he returns to London from boarding school, France and Margaret make a pact in which each finds a suitable romantic partner for the other. But when they go away to the countryside with Manny and Fred, a strange incestuous impulse seems to exist between the cousins, while Manny also must deal with a pregnancy.
Cast
Hywel Bennett as France
Leigh Taylor-Young as Manny
Jane Asher as Margaret
Sven-Bertil Taube as Fred
Clive Revill as George
Roy Dotrice as Martin Carr-Gibbons
Michael Elphick as The Driver
Jonathan Burn as Alberto
Yutte Stensgaard as Ullah
Susan Baker as Kate
Jennifer Baker as Ursula
Reception
Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote: "(Director) Miller and his screen writer, Peter Draper, avoided any revealing psychological confrontations in favor of making one of those depressingly modish movies in which the sensations created by things like slick photography, beautiful nudes and intrusive soundtrack music become the substance of the film, instead of its context."