The French Lieutenant's Woman
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Short description
Charles Smithson, a wealthy gentleman and fossil collector in Victorian England, becomes engaged to Ernestina shortly after they meet, with plans for a quick wedding. Around the same time, he notices a solitary young woman dressed in black on the harbour wall at Lyme and learns she is Sarah Woodruff, shunned by local society after being abandoned by a French officer. Moved by her isolation, Charles reaches out to her, and their connection develops against the constraints of the era.
The film frames that story within another: Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons play Sarah and Charles while also portraying Anna and Mike, the actors cast opposite each other in a screen adaptation of John Fowles's novel. The intensity of the material carries over into their own lives, testing the relationships they already have.
Karel Reisz directed, working from a Harold Pinter screenplay, with Leon Clore producing. The film was Reisz's fifth feature, arriving between Who'll Stop the Rain and Sweet Dreams. Streep and Irons lead a credited cast of thirty-six, among them Penelope Wilton and Hilton McRae.
Made for 8 million dollars, it returned 27 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.8 from around 3,200 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.5 from roughly 248. A critics' score of 7.3 from twenty-nine reviews places it slightly above both audience measures.
What's left behind the scenes
- In the original novel (1969) by John Fowles (1926-2005), a secondary plot and characters present in the film are absent. It contains three alternative endings, from which the reader is invited to choose the one that suits them best. The creation of two parallel storylines allowed the filmmakers to show two versions of the ending – a happy one and a tragic one.
- Meryl Streep practiced her British pronunciation daily with a linguist and arrived in the UK three months before filming began to further refine it.
- John Fowles, the author of the original novel, disliked the film adaptations of his two previous novels, 'The Collector' (1963) and 'The Magus' (1965). Both of these novels were adapted for the screen before Fowles' third novel, 'The French Lieutenant's Woman', was published, so this time the writer insisted on the right to choose the director for the adaptation himself. His choice fell on Karel Reisz (1926-2002).
- Screenwriter and director Karel Reisz (1926-2002) saw Jeremy Irons in some British television production and immediately cast him in the film.
- Based on the military prose of Vasily Bykov.
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