The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981)

The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981) was one of the first movies I saw when I went to university and I watched it with W for only the second time last night. It's aged just a bit, with the story-line not seeing as strong as it was the first time around, but it was still a good story. Merryl Streep is excellent in it, and ably backed up by Jeremy Irons.

It is the story of a man (Irons) who, while visiting his fiancee in Dorset, meets and falls instantly in love with a woman (Streep) who, so everyone in the town believes, had an illicit affair with a visiting Frenchman. I wonder if, even in movies, they would keep the veiled insults against Frenchmen in there nowadays. In any case, he feels compelled to help her escape her poverty and seemingly fatal shame. The film is a film within a film, with the main plot is mixed very cleverly with the story of a present day adulterous affair between Irons and Streep as they play the parts of the two characters from centuries past. All this is set mostly with Lyme Regis as its background along with the surround cliffs, all of which is well shot and very atmospheric.

I didn't remember the manipulative side of Streep's character from the first time I saw it, but this time it seemed a lot clearer. Did she love him, or was she just using him to escape from her poverty? His own naivety is equally obvious, particularly in his first engagement to the (amazingly) named Ernestina. I still don't know which it was. The main story ends one way, the present day story, another, with subtle little twists of the two stories coming together right at the end so that you're not supposed to know when they're acting being actors and when they're not. Very nice.

This is still a film to watch. Well worth the effort all round.