Firelight (1997)
Firelight (1997), written and directed by William Nicholson.
I can't review this without giving away much of the plot.
The first fifteen minutes are deceptive: a secretive Englishman contracts and pays well for three nights of sex with a poor young woman. This is the gorgeous Sophie Marceau, luminous in her Gallic beauty, intelligence and scarcely controlled passion.
She has no pleasure the first night. The second she cries, and by the last night her passion fully emerges and she is in love. Then they part and we realize the truth: this wasn't about sex -- well, not just sex -- but about making a baby. (Making love and making babies: try as we might, are they ever entirely separated in the subconscious?)
Seven years later she has hunted him down and appears at his country house as the new governess for his wild, fey daughter. Who is hers, too. For him, this means quiet hell breaks loose.
We come to see that it's much like Jane Eyre (1944), hotted up quite a bit. In the original story the mad wife burns down the house and dies in the fire. This time -- well, in stories fierce passion means fierce guilt and tragedy. Happy ending, though.
Sophie Marceau contributes some passion scenes and boobage, for which many thanks.
Stephen Dillane is always very fine. The little girl only made three films, all costume works in that same year. One of the others was Jane Eyre (1997).
Sets and costumes are believably realistic without being lavish. Pleasant score.
This is the director's only film and he does a respectable job. He's written other screenplays.
My wife likes this one, which makes me reflect on elements of the successful romance movie:
How much nudity and passion? It would seem that a little is plenty. Bare chests pressing together are ok, as are gentle body motions and gasps of pleasure, but explicit full-on banging is not required. Or desirable.
Beautiful, sexy women in film do not inspire jealousy or contempt as long as they have admirable characters, as in Jane Austen novels. ("Firmest breasts in film" says my wife of Marceau, and I pretend indifference).
In romance fantasies, a woman feels reluctant to say "yes" because she may be giving up her treasure without the just compensation of being loved by a man good enough for her. In this film, Marceau first has sex not because she wants to, but because she needs the money for her bankrupt father. It gives her an excuse for sex.
Having done that and known pleasure, the oxytocin kicks in and she falls in love.
Fortuitously, the gentleman actually turns out to be decent and unstuffy, and was not having sex for his own pleasure, but rather to produce a child to be his heir. This makes him more acceptable than your average landed lecher.
He doesn't want her when she first reappears, but of course cannot resist in the end.
Our heroine also has motherhood power: taming the wild child and saving her life.
Finally, the Jane Eyre moment. A governess is meant to be genteel and accomplished, but she is also poor and a servant. Watching from outside the ballroom in her plain dress, she sees the man she loves dancing with rich society women, and yearning, thinks: "It ought to be me. It ought to be me."
The North American DVD is cropped to 1.33, a terrible abuse of a scope ratio film. This is the one Netflix has. My thumbnails are from a PAL DVD import.
For those less wedded to discs than me, I see Amazon has this for streaming in high definition.
