It was not an easy film to watch, but watch it, I did. I did because I read Rhys in the 60s, and the book that drove this film among them. It does follow that story, but perhaps as other reviewers noted translating the novel to the screen was too much, too soon, or too literal.
Smith carries the film, while Bates and Adjani appear overly dramatic and disconnected as lovers.
The desperation of Marya (Adjani) is somewhat trivialized, while the Paris in which the story unfolds is nearly glorified but presented exactly how I image it in the 20s & 30s. Marya, while not literally Jean Rhys herself, is a reasonable facsimile and her doomed relationship with her first husband, and Ford Madox Ford became the basis of Quartet. In thinking about how the story plays out I remember how vulnerable and lost the author was and how much of herself she stuffed into her writing. But in that writing was a subtlety that did not translate onto the screen.
I gave it perhaps too high a vote, but it gets this 7 for its Ivory-Merchant treatment of painterly beauty which I always admire.
Smith carries the film, while Bates and Adjani appear overly dramatic and disconnected as lovers.
The desperation of Marya (Adjani) is somewhat trivialized, while the Paris in which the story unfolds is nearly glorified but presented exactly how I image it in the 20s & 30s. Marya, while not literally Jean Rhys herself, is a reasonable facsimile and her doomed relationship with her first husband, and Ford Madox Ford became the basis of Quartet. In thinking about how the story plays out I remember how vulnerable and lost the author was and how much of herself she stuffed into her writing. But in that writing was a subtlety that did not translate onto the screen.
I gave it perhaps too high a vote, but it gets this 7 for its Ivory-Merchant treatment of painterly beauty which I always admire.