The Invisible Woman
On release from 7th February
Forget the lawks-a-mercy effusions of so many screen representations of Charles Dickens’s works, Ralph Fiennes’s second film as actor/director is a cool, compelling account of repression and persistent passion. With a screenplay based on Claire Tomalin’s award-winning book, Fiennes depicts the writer’s relationship with Nelly Ternan, the youngest daughter of a thespian family. Avoiding costume drama cliché for a close, almost subjective approach (strong on cinematography and sound design) he develops a tale not just of one woman, but several wives, mothers and mistresses pushed to the margins even of their own lives. Felicity Jones excels as Nelly but it is Joanna Scanlan as Catherine Dickens, Charles’s wife, who almost wordlessly conveys the true cruelties of love in that era. Fiennes is brave enough to make Dickens utterly believable yet barely loveable. There is even a witty scene in which the Victorian multi-hyphenate directs himself in a play with his friend Wilkie Collins—a scene both directed and interpreted, of course, by Fiennes himself.
On release from 7th February
Forget the lawks-a-mercy effusions of so many screen representations of Charles Dickens’s works, Ralph Fiennes’s second film as actor/director is a cool, compelling account of repression and persistent passion. With a screenplay based on Claire Tomalin’s award-winning book, Fiennes depicts the writer’s relationship with Nelly Ternan, the youngest daughter of a thespian family. Avoiding costume drama cliché for a close, almost subjective approach (strong on cinematography and sound design) he develops a tale not just of one woman, but several wives, mothers and mistresses pushed to the margins even of their own lives. Felicity Jones excels as Nelly but it is Joanna Scanlan as Catherine Dickens, Charles’s wife, who almost wordlessly conveys the true cruelties of love in that era. Fiennes is brave enough to make Dickens utterly believable yet barely loveable. There is even a witty scene in which the Victorian multi-hyphenate directs himself in a play with his friend Wilkie Collins—a scene both directed and interpreted, of course, by Fiennes himself.
