An Awfully Big Adventure

An Awfully Big Adventure is a 1995 British comingofage film directed by Mike Newell. The story focuses on a teenage girl who joins a local repertory theatre troupe in Liverpool. During a winter production of Peter Pan, the play quickly turns into a dark metaphor for youth as she becomes drawn into a web of sexual politics and intrigue.

In the films prologue, a hotelier ushers a child into a bomb shelter during the Liverpool Blitz. We see a brief flashback to a woman leaving her baby in a basement surrounded by flickering candles. Before departing from the house, she quickly drops a string of pearls on the childs pillow, twined around a single rose.Years later, 16yearold Stella Bradshaw Georgina Cates lives in a working class household with her Uncle Vernon Alun Armstrong and Aunt Lily Rita Tushingham in Liverpool. Lacking an adult in her life to whom she feels close, she frequently goes into phone booths to speak with her mother, who never appears in the film. Her uncle, who sees a theatrical career as being her only alternative to working behind the counter at Woolworths, signs her up for speech lessons and pulls the strings to get her involved at a local repertory theatre. After an unsuccessful audition, Stella gets a job gofering for Meredith Potter Hugh Grant, the troupes sleazy, eccentric director, and Bunny Peter Firth, his faithful stage manager. ........

Source: Wikipedia