I certainly agree that AH was much too old to make sense as Joey. (Now if you had a time machine and could have gotten the very young AH that had a tiny part in The Lavender Hill Mob, *that* AH could have worked as Joey.) And when it comes what her attitude toward the part might have been: It's not just that Joey is an ingenue; the character was an ingenue with nothing to do and no place to go dramatically.
Despite some people making comments about this being movie about an interracial relationship, it isn't. It's a movie about how *other* people react to an interracial romance. The character of Joey is just a dramatic place holder for other characters to look at and react to. In and of herself, she is just a young woman who is happily new-fallen in love. That's what she is when the movie starts; that's what she is when the movie ends; and that's what she had been throughout the entire time in between. She is intentionally left a blank slate with little to no individual personality (other than a complete lack of prejudice) to make it that much easier for the audience to project their own daughters / sisters / whatevers onto her and by extension to get into Matt Drayton's shoes. That's where all of the dramatic action and tension is; and where the movie is looking to impact the audience.
People complain that Houghton comes across as a non-entity in this movie. I would argue that the character is purposely designed to be a non-entity. In this movie's function as a political message piece, Joey is intended to be a stand in for everyone's daughters. The best way to do that is to keep her from being much of an individual. Houghton successfully provides exactly the Joey that was intended for the movie precisely by being a bit of a non-entity. (Some may argue that a movie should not put its "message" or political subtext above its function as pure entertainment to that degree. That is one valid point of view, or preference in movie viewing. I won't argue that point. However, this movie just screams to me that it was was designed first and foremost, from the ground up, as a political statement and that everything about it was aimed purposefully in that direction.)
KH may have been doing her niece a favor by getting her the job of playing Joey. However, Kate was smart enough about those things to know that doing so wouldn't hurt the movie appreciably because even if they had hired an actress with more depth and range, she just would have been directed to play the character as a "blank slate" anyway. Not that Hepburn ever would have said that publicly because it would have hurt Houghton.
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