On a purely dramatic level, writer-director Sarah Goldbacher's "The Governess" isn't much more than a slightly more cerebral take on "Jane Eyre," burdened by a near-lethal dose of melodrama in its final half-hour. But for sheer visual elegance, "The Governess" has few equals, and the magnificence of its imagery more than compensates for its somewhat overheated story.
The movie is also bolstered tremendously by the finely tuned work of Minnie Driver and Tom Wilkinson, two actors who've demonstrated uncommon versatility throughout the last year, Driver in films ranging from the ridiculous ("Hard Rain") to the near-sublime ("Good Will Hunting"), and Wilkinson in roles running the gamut from the uptight foreman in "The Full Monty" to the mad Marquess in "Wilde" to the villain in "Rush Hour." Both actors are near the top of their form in "The Governess."
Driver lands the key role of Rosina, the kind of challenging, multi-faceted character most young actresses can only dream of playing, and she obviously revels in it. Born into a rich Jewish household, Rosina is sharp-witted, well-educated and bright enough to realize a woman's mind is far less valuable in the eyes of mid-19th-century English society than her domestic skills and drawing-room manners. Becoming a wife is viewed as the only viable option for a girl of her class; employment opportunities are limited to servitude or prostitution.
After her father is murdered, Rosina dodges a marriage of convenience to a fish merchant and takes it upon herself to provide for the family. Since anti-Semitism runs high all around her, she masquerades as a Christian named Mary Blackchurch to secure a job as a governess in a remote home on Scotland's pastoral Isle of Skye, which the city-bred lass describes in a letter home as "green, green and more green." The position is unrewarding at first -- "Mary" quickly realizes Clementina (Florence Hoath), the little girl she's supposed to watch over is "a rodent in lace petticoats" who enjoys leaving dead rats on people's pillows and staging demented little puppet shows -- but Charles Cavendish (Wilkinson), her employer, recognizes the governess' intelligence and allows her to assist him in his research lab. Charles is looking for a solution to stablize the photographs he's been taking; "Mary" finds the answer when she accidentally splashes one of the pictures with saltwater (which, in a minor triumph for her people, was made with kosher salt).
What eventually develops, of course, is exactly what one would expect in an isolated location between a lonely man with a chilly, nagging wife (Harriet Walter) and a young woman hungry for knowledge and acceptance. Meanwhile, "Mary" tries to hold on to her Jewish heritage by worshipping in secret and whispering prayers in Hebrew even as she crosses herself in the Cavendishs' church.
Since "The Governess" deals with the early days of photography, Goldbacher incorporates into her story all sorts of gorgeous visual effects to accentuate the material, including sepia-tinting that makes certain scenes look like antique postcards, complex double- and triple-exposures to layer images on top of each other and a wonderful bit in which "Mary" remains fixed in the center of the frame while hyperactive Clementina is seen as a blur zooming around her. Goldbacher also weaves some powerful, almost ethereal images into the encounters between Charles and "Mary"; the shot of a white veil rising and falling on the virginal governess' face as Charles caresses her is loaded with both symbolic meaning and erotic potency. It's moments like this one that linger in the mind long after the less convincing elements of "The Governess" have faded away.
James Sanford
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews