In a spare, reflective film that is only intermittently sharp, he takes Paul back to the childhood days when he admonished his Haitian father to speak English and links that rejection to the primness of Paul the adult.
22.
O'Byrne's Valene, who controls the family purse strings for reasons that quickly become apparent, is all goony, exaggerated primness as he struts through the house marking his possessions with giant V's and arranging his collection of figures of saints.
23.
Propelled by the spread of satellite and cable TV and the subsequent onslaught of far more graphic Western images, years of primness began to crumble : The thriving black market in pornography moved more into the open, skirts got shorter, TV shows grew more risque.
24.
"Sex and the Silver Screen " is a six-hour account of the decades-long battle between permissiveness and censoriousness, or between prurience and primness, or between the artist and the bluestocking, or between the exploiter and the upholder of standards.
25.
With a cast of 12 pert little girls who seemingly have been encouraged to lisp, and with a primness that outlasts the film's ingenuity, this " Madeline " is best watched by viewers who approach the material in a state of pre-adoration.
26.
Made up and dressed to look a bit like Eleanor Roosevelt ( the period-appropriate costumes are by Judith Dolan ), the actress'very accent and vocal inflections bespeak both a heritage of Southern Jewish gentility and a fluttery primness that never quite conceals a yearning for a more fully lived life.
27.
The most enjoyable scenes are those between Rona ( Mary-Louise Parker, who, with her suggestive lower lip and brimming, clear eyes, looks like Mary Tyler Moore with all the primness ironed out ) and her best friend, Robert ( Daniel MacIvor ), cattily going over the pitfalls of relationships.
28.
Many members of the familiar company remained : Lynn, in his customary " silly ass " role, Robertson Hare, as a figure of put-upon respectability; Mary Brough as a good-hearted battle-axe; Ethel Coleridge as the voice of middle-class primness; and the saturnine Gordon James.
