THE GOVERNESS (Sony Classics) Starring: Minnie Driver, Tom Wilkinson, Florence Hoath, Harriet Walter, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. Screenplay: Sandra Goldbacher. Producer: Sarah Curtis. Director: Sandra Goldbacher. MPAA Rating: R (nudity, sexual situations) Running Time: 114 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Here's the faint praise with which I ultimately damn THE GOVERNESS: while I was consistently interested in the film, I'm not sure I could tell you what the point of it all was. Certainly I could outline the plot, which centers around a young Sephardic Jewish woman named Rosina Da Silva (Minnie Driver) in 1840s London. When her father dies suddenly, leaving a mountain of debt, Rosina is obliged either to marry or find employment of her own. The high-spirited girl opts for the latter course, posing as a Gentile named Mary Blackchurch in order to work as a governess for a Christian family called Cavendish on Scotland's Isle of Skye. There she finds herself drawn to patriarch Charles (Tom Wilkinson), a reclusive scientist, even as his son Henry (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) becomes fascinated with Rosina/Mary.
From there, however, things start to get a little murky. We know that Rosina is a stranger in a strange land; will the central conflict be a clash of cultures? We know her young charge Clementina (Florence Hoath) is a trouble-maker; will the story follow their growing mutual affection? We know that Rosina has dreams of performing on the stage; will we find her getting lost in the real-life performance she is forced to undertake? We know that Mrs. Cavendish (Harriet Walter) feels suffocated by her isolated country life; will she and Rosina act as counterpoints in a study of acceptable female roles, or bond over their shared pining for the city?
The answer to these questions and more is a resounding "sort of." The bulk of the narrative is devoted to the developing relationship between Charles and Rosina, a relationship hinged on a provocative irony: though Rosina loves Charles for his ability to appreciate her mind (when he invites her to assist in his research), he only knows her as the fiction she has created. Yet all the rich background provided by writer/director Sandra Goldbacher teases without adding up to enough. In the long run, it's virtually irrelevant that Rosina is Jewish; all she really needs is some sort of dark secret to hide from the Cavendish family. The Rosina-as-actress angle disappears after the first act, shortly followed by the conflict between Rosina and Clementina (dismissed in one threatening tug of the pigtails).
Most disappointing of all is the lack of interest Goldbacher shows in developing her secondary characters. Mrs. Cavendish, a potentially touching portrait of repressed longing, instead becomes comic relief described as though "she had a lemon stuck up her bottom." Even more mysterious is young Henry, whose obsession with Rosina may be an act of rebellion, or perhaps a fleeting adolescent crush, or perhaps some mixture of the two. In any case, it certainly doesn't mean enough for a lingering scene of Henry writhing naked in the surf to provide anything more than the film's _second_ gratuitous penis shot. Driver's strong, sensual performance as Rosina and Wilkinson's turn as the conflicted Charles do fill in plenty of gaps, but it's tough to get caught up in a romantic square composed of one real woman, half an identifiable man, a pale and petulant enigma, and a stick figure wrapped in a shawl.
All the time that might have been spent sorting out their motivations is spent instead on a metaphor so massively obvious you might trip over it on your way out into the lobby. Charles' major scientific investigation involves photography, particularly how to hold the transient images which fade over several hours. Leaving aside Rosina's Forrest Gump-like discovery of the darkroom and the concept of saline solution developing, the entire photography angle feels like one long attempt to distinguish between our two principal characters -- she wants to capture human faces (i.e. she's vibrant and alive), he is interested only in inanimate objects (i.e., he's cold and reserved). What we don't see is what this has to do with any of the other cultural or sociological tidbits Goldbacher drops along the way. Driver's Rosina is a compelling enough presence that you'll want to put the pieces together, but you'll find far more ambition than resolution. THE GOVERNESS fairly drowns in context desperately seeking some content.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 blue Skyes: 5.
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