Frustrating. A wasted opportunity.

aliciadipesto

What a wasted opportunity. That should have been a fantastic 2 part drama. But it so wasn't. I could have spent that 3 hours ironing. Or sleeping. Or staring deeply into my lovers eyes trying to find the words to... to.. to... OH FOR GOODNESS SAKE!

I never got around to reading the book and the trailer looked brilliant. After all that I have to give the post production house who made the trailer 11 out of 10 for editing and sound mixing as it really turned water into wine. What a shame the actual film didn't live up to its promise.

Can't knock the production, the production design, the CGI, any of that. The acting, well I guess they did as well as they could with what was probably only 5-10 pages of script and the rest was just mooning at each other, God it was boring. I wouldn't have minded it as much if the Redmayne and Poesy had any chemistry at all but there was none, it was like watching....well it was like watching 2 actors staring at each other for 3 hours. And that sex scene - even in 2012 post-watershed, I found the sight of oral sex barely moments after their first kiss a bit much. I have no doubt in 1910, Wraysford would have been on the receiving end of a belt round the head if he'd attempted that back then.

No wonder she went off and had a baby and he never knew about it; they barely spoke to each other for the whole show. You can't have a relationship based on smouldering looks. She left him, had a baby in secret and died and the whole time he just looked like he needed the bathroom and was trying to control himself. Yawn.

The timing was unfortunate - if it had been on after Celebrity Masterchef or something banal the UK population might have been more forgiving but being scheduled directly after the The Midwife, full of snappy dialogue, first class acting, brilliant production design, good pacing and dry humour, its faults were even more glaring.

Oh well, looks like Tim Bevan better get back to what he's best at, more Johnny English or some such nonsense.

score 3/10

aliciadipesto 31 January 2012

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2558298/