EMILY

Emily Foster is an American-born seventeen-year-old brought up in London. Her father died when she was a small child, while her mother, Margaret Foster, is supported by a lover. The film, set in 1928, follows Emily as she returns home from a finishing school in Switzerland to her mother's country house in the English countryside, where she meets several characters who would like to seduce her, and follows her induction into sensual pleasures. The film follows her interactions with these adult pursuers. Richard Walker, her mother's lover, is a middle-aged man-about-town who quietly sets his sights on Emily, while a young American writer and schoolteacher named James Wise tries to impress her by sensual acrobatics in his flying machine. However, her first sexual experience is an encounter with a woman — Augustine Wain, a Swedish painter who lives nearby. Emily then has her first sexual encounter with a man, Augustine's middle aged husband Rupert Wain, in a scene indicating penetrative sex.

Meanwhile, perhaps intended to mark the contrast in the sexual mores of the different British classes at the time, housemaid Rachel (Jane Hayden) and her soldier boyfriend Billy (David Auker) are engaged to be married, but Rachel tries to insist on waiting until after their wedding before they have sexual intercourse.

Emily's first sexual experience is with Augustine Wain, a female painter. She later loses her virginity to Augustine’s husband, Rupert, and the film contrasts her journey with the housemaid Rachel's efforts to wait until marriage.

The ending underscores Emily’s initiation into adult sexuality through both same-sex and heterosexual encounters, positioning her experiences as both personal awakening and a commentary on social expectations of the era. By paralleling her story with that of Rachel, the film highlights the differing pressures and freedoms faced by women of varying classes, leaving viewers to ponder the implications of desire, agency, and conformity in a changing society.