As a child you see your parents as protectors, shields against the ugliness of the world, but eventually you come to the realization that for all their morals and life lessons their as fallible as you and the revelation of hypocrisy becomes your edge that sets off your youthful rebellion. These days, where everything is at your child’s fingertips, where seemingly harmless social networking websites with all their safety precautions still leave your children vulnerable to the corruption of just about everything bad in this world, well, I have had this very rational fear that it’s bringing us straight downhill. Love In A Cold Climate is very much social networking 1.0 at it’s most revealing and, if anything, is a blueprint for just how wrong things can go for society.

The setting for Love In A Cold Climate is a set of posh English estates housed by noble families who come together to socialize, be it dancing, gambling, gossiping or what have you. The group is comprised of power players, cheaters, bolters, and even a pedophile. The group is controlled by a “don’t rock the boat” kind of mentality causing them to shape shift in their fashions, personas, and interests with whatever is popular. One of the unfortunate attachments to this kind of life is the inclusion of the groups children as chess pieces in their mad grab at social acceptance. The children who are whisked away to these parties and often shipped off to stay with other families for brief periods in order to increase their chances at being accepted into the social circle end up seeing too much and having their respect for the pomp and pride way their parents hold up their noses at uncivilized behavior and in turn end up being raised on the uncouth social behavior of their parents, seen only at social gatherings.

The parents wish to keep to the tradition, or rather façade, of civilized behavior, but their inability to keep to the ideology of what is civilized is the undoing of their children who in the end begin breaking down the walls of the previous generations idea’s of civility and creating a knew era of thinking which ruins their lives and their parents conservative world views. The result is an accelerated youthful abandon, a world with no lines in which you do not cross, and painful consequences that quickly destroy the age of innocence for the children involved. Love In A Cold Climate is often times hilarious watching the young misbehave and take on their parents personas gossiping, socializing, and looking to get into trouble wherever they can find it but it’s also a sobering tale. Having been published in book form in 1949, these musings on social rule are alarmingly preserved by our lack of progress in this area and in contrast seems almost tame against the way we socialize today and how we react towards trying to remain current at all costs. A fantastic viewing to ponder or just watch for it’s entertaining qualities. As always final judgment is yours. Enjoy.