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Mary, to the world, is a governess working in a Protestant house in Scotland. But Jane Eyre she isn't-she puts away her dreams of acting after the death of her father forces her to bring in a family income-all in the while she conceals that she is Rosina, a Jewess pretending to be of Italian descent. It is no lie when she reassures the lady of the house she isn't Catholic.
Her new surroundings are more than dyfunctional. The character of the bored mother is unoccupied and perched in a gilded but bland cage, propped up and seated in nearly every scene like she's dead and posed "in state." Her husband, Cavendish, hides away with his mysterious science studies and the daughter(Rosina/"Mary's" charge) whose responds to boredom (and a lack of attention) differently than her mother by playing pranks on her new governess. The son, a decade older and recently expelled from school, is a product of this same boredom, grown but immature as his sister and decidedly perverse.
After a prank by the daughter, the governess quickly lets her student know who's boss, and the student becomes more submissive. But their bonding lessens as Rosina's becomes curious about the father, who becomes equally curious about her. She pays less attention to her student and more to her employer, who, impressed with her knowledge and curiosty (he has no anger after she sneaks into his archaic photo laboratory) she eventually becomes his assistant. All in the while Rosina's dead father visits her in her dreams and memories-until Cavendish replaces her father in dreams and the two have an inevitable affair.
Then there is second plot is Rosina, a Jew of Spanish/Portuguese decent, who feels akward in a gentile setting. She isn't used to the foreign food (she and her sister once believed semolina to be semen) and artifacts. While it's funny to watch her pick up a crucifix for the first time, look at it, then toss it to the side, it's sad to watch her eat passover alone, in secret. She remembers her father and passover as a child as she eats an egg in salt water-which spills on a nearby photo. This is the breakthrough to getting a picture developed, literally, the third plot, Rosina and Cavendish learning the process of photogaphy,outside the sexual tension.
Though both are student to discovering the scientific process, it is only Rosina who is willing to take it a step further, photography as an art. The art/science photography is the undoing of their little situation, the business and pleasure. The final straw is Cavendish revealing his new process and not sharing the credit for it-he was still bitter about her secret pictures of him, nude, as he forbade.
So, Rosina, endowed with a new ability to make an income, decides it's unnecessary to hide her true identity or stay in the employ of a man who betrayed her. She leaves the family in style: on the way out the door she hands bored Mrs. Cavendish what the housewife always sat yearning for, a piece of "culture"-her husband's nude portrait.
That's just a few plot circles and it does feel like a long film at times. Rosina and Cavendish have a strange sexual tension, an attraction to each other (if not a lack of screen chemistry) that both characters seem almost surpised at. The younger Cavendish is an imp, hardly in the film (it's like he's purpose is to barely pop out from the background), and I wish he and Rosina had more screen time. Overall, it's a gorgous period film and the colorful setting of the Sephardic Jewish London is so welcome after a string of movies set in what feels like the same 19th century, Pre-Dickinson-Pre-Industrial rural 'scape. The Austin/Eliot/Brontes have their merits, and I am a fan of Sense and Sensibilty (Emma Thompson's), but I think Hollywood should keep taking us to new places, like in this lovely film.
