The French Lieutenant's Woman

I had purchased this film from a charity shop a number of weeks ago. With the recent death of the author of the book this film was based on (John Fowles) I was inspired to watch his most famous work. I... Full review

I loved The French Lieutenant's Woman. The film-within-the-film is more than just an experimental device - it is actually a key feature of how the film works and part of what makes it so fascinating and enjoyable. Harold Pinter, who wrote... Full review

... Anyone who's read my earlier review of "Damage", and disagrees with the feelings I expressed there; THIS is how Jeremy Irons should be utilized to portray destructive longing! It's a bodice-ripper without the ripping going on - all internalised, *raw*... Full review

This is a real curio of a movie, more a dry experiment with form than a story concerning fleshed-out characters. The primary focus is on the plot developments of a film within the film--a story of two illicit lovers in 19th... Full review

Fantastic performance from Jeremy Irons, and of course Meryl Streep is flawless. 1981's interpretation of a period piece, contrasted with '81 present day. I am a huge fan of late 70s and early 80s movie conventions for quality movies - slower... Full review

This movie opens with a scene of an archaeologist chipping at a multi-chambered Nautilus shell fossillized in stone. The image is apropos, as the story itself opens from chamber to ever larger chamber as it weaves two seemingly disparate stories with... Full review

I came to the film adaptation of 'The French Lieutnant's Woman' with initial trepidation. As anyone who has read the John Fowles novel will appreciate, this is one text for which adaptation would not be a walk in the park. How... Full review

If you're researching the beginnings of today's Goth movement, be sure to look at this complex tale of Sarah Woodruff (Meryl Streep), a secretive, pale-skinned outcast in a 19th century English coastal town. Known to the locals as "poor tragedy," she... Full review

This film is visually fascinating as well as dramatically satisfying. Every camera shot is breathtaking - this includes both stories. The script is brilliant. I thoroughly enjoyed the post-modernist self-awareness - the blurred line between one reality and the other calls... Full review

John Fowles' original novel The French Lieutenant's Woman was distinguished by a literary technique that involved telling a story of Victorian sexual and social oppression within the bounds of a 1970s viewpoint. While we watch as Sarah ( Meryl Streep ), a 19th-century Englishwoman ruined by an affair with a French lieutenant, enters into another disastrous relationship with principled young Charles ( Jeremy Irons ), we are constantly made aware that what we're seeing is only a film. ... Full Review

All of this leads to a beautiful, intelligent film which simply takes a little while to get started. He finds out that she waits endlessly for a French sailor with whom she had, a torrid relationship. ... Full Review

John Fowles' original novel The French Lieutenant's Woman was distinguished by a literary technique that involved telling a story of Victorian sexual and social oppression within the bounds of a 1970s viewpoint. While we watch as Sarah ( Meryl Streep ), a 19th-century Englishwoman ruined by an affair with a French lieutenant, enters into another disastrous relationship with principled young Charles ( Jeremy Irons ), we are constantly made aware that what we're seeing is only a film. ... Full Review

THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN is a beautiful film to look at, and remarkably well-acted. In one of them, Sarah Woodruff ( Meryl Streep ) still keeps her forlorn vigil for the French lieutenant who loved and abandoned her, and she still plays her intriguing cat-and-mouse game with the obsessed young man ( Jeremy Irons ) who must possess her. ... Full Review

Asa star-struck teen transfixed for hours by Julia Child's "The French Chef," Kathie Flamion couldn't have imagined that, decades later, she would grant her kitchen idol a few moments of sympathy. ... Full Article

A bestselling or award-winning novel does not necessarily make a good blockbuster movie The French Lieutenant's Woman, anyone? but how do novelists feel when their books are being turned into films? ... Full Article

TORONTO -- Is there no other city for musicians than Paris? Sure, it's a nice place to visit. But given how the city has become a breeding ground for many a musician as of late (Feist, Buck 65, Ben Harper... ... Full Article

Those who prefer their prose without fancy textual tricks may blame John Fowles for the colourful mess that was postmodernism. His most celebrated novel, The French Lieutenant's Woman , set in Victorian Lyme Regis, was greatly admired for having two... ... Full Article

Autumn films dry up as Hollywood eyes pay cable During the past decade, autumn was harvest time for the serious moviegoer, the season for films with hearts of humanism and minds dreaming of Oscars. ... Full Article

Nothing like the book, but who cares?Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons play an American actress and her co-star who are playing the parts of Sarah Woodruff and Charles Smithison in their film version of The French Lieutetant's Woman . ... Full Article