John Fowles's Victorian-age romance has been interwoven with a modern-day romance between the two lead actors starring in a screen adaptation of that book -- not between the two real-life actors, Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons, but between two fictional actors who are played by the aforementioned two real ones. The intention, one gathers, was to create a cinematic equivalent to the novelist's occasional intrusions into his narrative in his own voice. The effect, however, is not like taking up alternate viewpoints on one story -- first inside it, then outside it, as in the novel -- but rather like switching back and forth between two completely separate stories which just happen to share the same actors, as though changing the TV dial between Cleopatra and The V.I.P.'s. Each story takes something away from the other and doesn't give anything much in return. The whole business could conceivably impress the general public as interestingly experimental. But even as such, this art movie for the masses (or for beginners) is not so hardheaded as to deprive the moviegoer of a followable story, a lot of gorgeous, rough-grained photography (Freddie Francis, following up his Elephant Man comeback), a lot of violin music on the soundtrack, a lot of costumes, and above all, a lot of acting (or something that looks like acting: it surely doesn't look like real human behavior). Written by Harold Pinter; directed by Karel Reisz. (1981) — Duncan Shepherd
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