gavin6942
A film is being made of a story, set in 19th century England, about Charles (Jeremy Irons), a biologist who is engaged to be married, but who falls in love with outcast Sarah (Meryl Streep), whose melancholy makes her leave him after a short, but passionate affair.I did not think this would be my kind of movie. A period piece romance with Meryl Streep? Sounds pretty boring. But instead, we get this really interesting movie-in-movie, where the action we see as real can be cut away from at any time. And then this also allows us two stories in one, which have more than a few parallels.Streep is obviously a gifted actress and the best of her generation. Irons is great, as well, though not nearly as recognized. He makes all that he touches turn to gold.
gelman@attglobal.net
Thirty years after seeing it for the first time, I revisited this film last night on PBS. I had remembered only two things from it: The quality of Meryl Streep's acting and the famous scene of her standing on the very edge of a stone wave breaker while the sea burst around her. I had forgotten that it was a film within a film. I had forgotten all but the vaguest outlines of the plot. I had entirely forgotten Jeremy Irons. If retention in memory is the hallmark of a good work of art, I'd have to give "The French Lieutenant's Woman" a low mark.And yet the second viewing of the film was a revelation. I hadn't previously been struck by how beautiful Meryl Streep was when she was young. Nor did I remember how controlled her acting was in this overwrought movie. "The French Lieutenant's Woman" was nominated for five Academy Awards and deservedly lost all five, including Ms. Streep's nomination as best actress. Nevertheless, this was one of the record number of nominations she has compiled and it should be seen if only for that reason. It adds a different dimension to her incomparable portfolio of challenging roles. Jeremy Irons fares less well in my estimation. Like Ms. Streep, he plays two parts, one as her co-star in the film being made and the other as the lover ruined by his all-consuming love for her film character. Not that Irons does a bad job of acting. He simply fails to be convincing in the second of his two roles. That may be because the story (or the part) is inherently unconvincing, sort of Wuthering Heights without the emotional tide which causes that heavy- breathing romance to seem plausible to many women if not to their menfolk.It's still not a great movie. Maybe not even a good movie. But if all we ever cared to watch were good/great films, Hollywood would soon be out of business.
hcoursen
This film is a joy to watch -- as not many films these days are. The settings are superbly created -- the green, grotto-like woodland where Irons and Streep meet in the Victorian world of the film, the murky streets of Lyme, Exeter, and London, and the interior of the lawyer's office, for example. The Victorian part of the film emerges from the dawning of the concept of abnormal psychology (just before Freud) and is really convincing. Streep shows us that her character cannot move on emotionally until she has worked out her own madness. That constitutes a remarkable and complex performance of insanity and self-awareness inhabiting a single psyche. She earns the gentle movement out of the tunnel and onto the calm lake. The turbulence of the unconscious -- that threatening sea of which Irons has warned her -- has been subdued. Seems to me the flaw lies in the 'modern story' (as some here have pointed out). It may be that the Streep character is trying to find a subtext for her fictional heroine, but it looks like the old ennui, so that, while her lack of concern for the relationship is understandable, his obsession with it is not. Though the garden party at the end almost gets it there. Were we shown her decision there? If so, I missed it. I like the concept of the 'two endings' and their contrast, but the ending in the 20th century was a so what? The one in the 19th century was complex and included much of the pain that the relationship had caused both characters. A little more attention to the contemporary love affair -- to suggest that it was more than just a romp on location -- would have helped that dimension of the film per se and also suggested what the Victorian lovers had earned within their Hardyesque world.
preppy-3
Charles Henry Smithson (Jeremy Irons) falls in love with outcast Sarah (Meryl Streep) in 1800s England. In the present day Mike (Irons again) and Anna (Streep again) are doing a movie about their tragic love affair and the movie jumps back and forth between the stories.Incredibly dull movie. Streep and Irons are fantastic in all their roles but the script is dull, the movie drags on forever and the parallels between the two stories are pointless and groaningly obvious. I have nothing against slowly paced movies (I love "Howard's End" and "Room With a View") as long as they're interesting. This isn't. You don't care one bit for any of these characters or their situations. I caught this snoozer in a theatre and had trouble staying awake! This is one of those "prestige" movies that critics fall all over themselves praising but audiences stay away from. This was a bomb at the box office and has (rightfully) been forgotten. This gets a 2 just for Streep and Irons.
AD
