This disc contains both the R and NC-17 rated versions and checking the running times, that latter is only about 15 seconds longer, hardly a justification for putting both on the same disc, especially since it's all fairly tame nowadays as a sex film. Anyway, this movie is a filming of a novel that sought rather ambitiously to serve as a prequel to Jane Eyre, telling its story from the viewpoint of Mr. Rochester's mad first wife and filling in how she wound up as she did. A large part of the blame falls to Rochester himself, who is revealed as the story plays out, to be arrogant, cold and philandering, a poor match for the sensual, emotionally needy wife. She is not helped by England's laws of inheritance and property ownership, which put all of her inherited wealth into his name after marriage. He marries her for her wealth and yet she becomes first his economic then literal prisoner as her latent emotional instability manifests. The cinematography is pretty decent, accurately evoking the dangers Europeans faced in tropical climates a few centuries back, and contrasting that with the bleakness of life in drafty old English houses on the snowy moors of the Brontes. However, the film works best as an autopsy of a doomed relationship; as a tropical hothouse erotic thriller it barely works and then only on a level with Red Shoe Diaries or something like that.
Review of Wide Sargasso Sea
