The Wings of the Dove (1997)
Director: Iain Softley Cast: Helena Bonham-Carter, Linus Roache, Allison Elliott, Elizabeth McGovern, Michael Gambon Rated R: Sexuality
by Nathaniel R. Atcheson (nate@pyramid.net)
The Wings of the Dove is a vicarious experience, a film that instigates more thought than outward reaction. It's a tale of lost love and death, a film about unhappy people who become even more unhappy in desperate attempts to make themselves feel better. The characters are quiet, and they don't always tell each other what they're thinking. It's a subtle, touching movie, enhanced by some of the best acting of the year, and by director Iain Softley's striking artistic eye for scenery and human emotions.
Helena Bonham-Carter stars as Kate Croy, a young Englishwoman who lives under the wing of her rich Aunt Maude (Charlotte Rampling). Kate's life is clearly not what she wants it to be--her idea of fun has nothing to do with socializing at large, exquisite gatherings at which the richest individuals in society get drunk and have grand conversations. She's in love with Merton Densher (Linus Roache), a journalist who doesn't mesh well with her own social status. Maude insists that they don't see each other, but Kate can't live with this.
It's not long before she meets Millie Theale (Allison Elliott), a dying American heiress. The two become friends, but Kate's intentions far exceed friendship--her plan includes convincing Merton to seduce Millie and get her to fall in love with him so that she will leave him all of her money. This will leave Merton a rich man and therefore in the appropriate social class for Kate to marry him.
Carter gives a deep, brooding performance as Kate; her struggles are what makes this film such a ponderous experience. Here we have a woman who loves a man so much that she implores him to do something that, at first glance, is a truly awful piece of manipulation. The trick is that Kate actually cares very much for Millie, but her love for Merton is much stronger. Kate is not a hateful woman, but she is as unhappy as they come. Her love for Merton is all that keeps her going, and this plot she contrives serves not to make her better, but to hurt the people involved. Carter's work here is strikingly good; she evokes the kind of sexual and emotional passion that is rarely associated with this seemingly serene time period of the early 1900s, and the outcome is a character who is somehow always sympathetic, even in her worst moments.
Linus Roache is very strong as Merton, though his character is the one who speaks the least. His intentions and thoughts are not always apparent, but little subtleties in his language and facial expressions tell the audience exactly what it wants to know. Allison Elliott gives the film's best performance as the rich American girl, an person so frayed and ruined by her disease that pity is the last thing she wants--she doesn't even tell her friends that she is sick. The relationships between these people are always under examination, and constantly changing. What they go through is nothing short of mental torture.
Softley's direction, mixed with the John Beard's breathtaking production design and Eduardo Serra's cinematography, make The Wings of the Dove one of the most attractive pictures of the year; it's a film seamless in period detail and mood. Softley also does some subtle things with the camera--watch carefully the final scene between Kate and Merton. Moments like this are what I love to see in movies. The Wings of the Dove is one of those films that makes you think for a long time after it's finished; only then can the power and depth of this story and these people be completely understood.
>From 0-10: 8 Grade: B+
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Nathaniel R. Atcheson
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