Customer Reviews

Governess, the

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

If you can put aside the stuffed dead animals in every room, the grubby-looking sets, the furs, and other "atmosphere" items that make you swear you can almost smell the mothballs and formaldehyde, this is an interesting story.

A young woman, prompted by the sudden and unexpected death of her father, leaves home and takes a position as a governess for a wealthy family who lives in a large house full of secrets. As so many stories like this go, she helps the family find each other (at least to some extent, as this family is extremely dysfunctional and just plain weird so they're never going to be close and happy) and finds herself. In time, she learns the art of the new science called photography (as she is the only one in the world who can come up with a formula to make the photographic chemical process work even tho top scientists have been trying to find the solution for years), and then when she returns home, she opens her own portrait studio with money from ?? some source.

If you can overlook some major flaws (if her family has so much wealth, fancy clothes, etc, then why leave home in order to earn a pittance as a governess; her employer never checks her references; if her Jewish roots and close-knit community are so close and so helpful, then why don't they help her, her mother and her sister after the father's death; how does she get the money to open the photo studio; how is it she solves the chemical process mystery when no one else can) and if dead critters don't make you bat an eye, then you might enjoy this period piece.

If you're a big Tom Wilkinson fan (The Full Monty, Separate Lies, Rush Hour 1), then you'll especially enjoy one scene in which he's "asleep" starkers (nekked/full frontal) and shows the world he has absolutely nothing to be ashamed of ;-)

Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Bend It Like Beckham) shows far more skin that Minnie Driver, showing his bare butt. His performance seems convoluted and overdone at best, and I think the film would've been better off without the character in the story. IMHO.

The employer's wife, although over-starched and with a voice that sounds worse than fingernails going down a chalkboard, is at least fairly essential to the story. But the character of the wife is very, very annoying.

If not for Tom Wilkinson, I'd give this film zero stars. But he always brings a certain something to a picture. Yes, even if he keeps his clothes on!

Sensual, sensuous, beautifully filmed, some nudity (which was delightful, although no sex, unfortunately), and a wonderful story of a woman's first love and love affair and blossoming into her power. The soundtrack was stunning. I recommend it highly!

The plots: sexual tension between a governess and her employer, tension of a woman in a foreign place, and all along the struggle to make pictures....

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.

Rosalina's family is wealthy and Jewish. When her father dies, she is forced to enter the workforce disguised as a Christian governess "Mary Blackchurch." While she is employed on a remote island of Skye, she falls in love wither her employer AND his son and has affairs with both.

I enjoyed the first half of the movie. But I'm not a big fan of movies where the hero/ine commit adultery. The first affair, in my opinion was rather skanky. The affair with the son, a rebound romance, was worse, because he looked WAY too young, and almost girlish with those HUGE pouting lips. Plus Rosalina seemed oodles more mature than he was portrayed.

Feh... I thought this film was okay, but nothing really special. I'd like to see the heroine in a decent relationship with a decent guy, instead of having a torrid affair with every man in sight... Is this too much to ask for?

Absolutely gorgeous, I loved everything about this film. The actors were great the colours were crisp and it certainly held my attention from start to finish. Loved it...

The film starts with the celebration of Purim--a very fun, carnival-like, Jewish holiday--amongst the Sephardic (Spanish & Portguese) Jews of 1830s London. We see a synagogue, supposedly the 1700s Bevis Marks, and a rabbi leading the sermon--and wearing a top hat. This is not a usual portrayal of Jews--the synagogue is full of men in top hats, and the heroine, Rosina da Silva, is sitting in the gallery wearing a beautiful Spanish mantilla. There is no persecution, Rosina's family is not benighted--rather, they are fairly wealthy (as Rosina walks into her house, a maid drops her a curtsy) and worldly, but still steeped deeply and beautifully in their own customs (Rosina wears a Spanish headdress; Rosina and her suitor, Benjamin, dance a lovely dance in two circles of women and men, respectively, never touching, but darting glances at each other--to the tune of the nearly 1000-year-old Avram Avinu). The outside world is no more than a curiosity: the inspired discussion between Rosina and her younger sister centers about the mysterious desert that gentile have--it looks like semen and is called semolina (naturally, when Rosina comes to live with the as-gentile-as-possible family off the coast of Scotland, guess what she gets for desert?). Rosina's world is beautiful--it's music, laughter, beautiful fabrics, dancing, bright candle-light.

Outside, unfortunately, is Whitechapel--and it breaks into the happy celebration, when Rosina's father is stuck with a knife in the street outside. Here, it is possible to see the clash of the sheltered Jewish inside and the brutal outside. Rosina's mother, shaken, is whispering: "We do not get murdered... We do not have debts..."

Faced with the prospect of marrying a rather repellent fish merchant (a very similar character to Sholem Aleichem's disgusting Reb Leizer Wulf), Rosina chooses employment instead--as a governess. Of course, she over-dramatizes, and makes up for herself as Christian name as possible: Mary Blackchurch. Named so, she is hired by a gentile family in the Isle of Skye; the mother is boring and bored, dreaming of London, where she had never been, as if it is her rightful place to be there; the daughter--Rosina's charge--is a bit devilish; the father dabbles in "science" (in photography, Rosina later discovers)--and suffers because he cannot capture the images he makes, having no fixation: they fade, after a day or so, into nothingness; and the son has been sent down from Oxford after having been found in an opium den with a prostitute (supposedly). There, Rosina will become her employer's assistant--and mistress.

I loved the casting of Minnie Driver as Rosina--she has the archetypal Jewish beauty, and her black dresses and Spanish mantillas contrast beautifully with her mistress' ridiculous hairdos. Tom Wilkinson as Cavendish, Rosina's employer and love interest, I did not love quite as much. There was very little chemistry between them from the beginning; had Cavendish possessed a bit more charm, you could write it off on superficial attraction. Here, you only had to wonder what on earth has she found in him--enough to overcome her modesty? He looks tired and old and ruffled...

Rosina's exploits into photography are beautifully done--from the subject matter of Cavendish's experiments (mostly dead birds' wings), to her discovery of the saline fixation (during her lonely Passover celebration, she spills a bit of salt water onto one of Cavendish's fading prints, and it keeps the picture from fading), to the photo sessions in which they photograph each other, to Rosina's later work in London, where she uses a camera obscura to capture the beauty of her own people.

In general, the film itself is a bit like a camera obscura--one has the feeling of looking into dark box, and a world, wholly unexpected and wildly beautiful, is looking back at you. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the early Victorian era.

Avoid it like the plauge> You see British films GO OUT OF THEIR WAY to make their films tediously slow and tiresome. It seems, for whatever off reason, that this style of film is found favorable by Vritish viewers. However, for the rest of us, this will literally put you to sleep. The chemistry is NOT eveident between the main characters, and development is sparse.

My interest in The Governess was piqued when I heard that Jonathan Rhys-Meyers (as Henry Cavendish) appears in a decidedly supporting - but delicious role. Having seen some of his previous films (Velvet Goldmine and Ride with the Devil) I was very pleased to see that this film was a departure for him as he is usually cast as a theatrically effeminate villian-type. Here, he plays the young love-lorn son of the vindictive lord of the Manor played by Tom Wilkinson. He hopelessly pines for Rosina (Minnie Driver) and is crushed at the end when his affections are denied. I was glad to see his normally over-the-top acting style was gracefully curtailed yet intense at the same time. It's long and tedious at times (as most British films tend to crawl by for American audiences), but at the end, it seems like you have just had the satisfaction of reading a poignant bestselling novel. The movie itself has the complex and metaphoric plot of a good novel, but keeps to a central character without dallying in unrelated side-plots. I like this movie for grey, rainy afternoons on the couch with a friend who is a novelist. Or not. Forget that, watch it whenver you like. It's good anytime. Watch it for culture and perspective.

I was very interested in seeing "The Governess" and fairly lept at the opportunity to do so when my friend Marion suggested it. What a disappointment! Haven't been so let down since "Murder on the Orient Express" as a child.

What's the matter? The major problem is that there's just too much crammed into the movie as plot devices. Why not deal with just a few circumstances, than have all this tumult which in the end, doesn't even signify?

Interesting premise in a nutshell description: A 19th century Jewish woman must conceal her religion as she takes up a governess position. That's how it was presented, and frankly, that's enough. No, how about her father gets murdered in the street! Well, that was shocking, but what of it? It never got solved, it never figured in the rest of the movie. I mean, he could have just, you know, died. Why murdered? Then she goes off to the dreariest place in all of Scotland. The master of the house keeps trying to make early photographs. The Governess takes it upon herself to solve his problems developing film by dumping salt in his solutions. Hey what do you know, he evidently gets credited as the inventor of the photograph, when it was really The Governess. Well, what about that? Couldn't that be a good feminist statement in and of itself? No, let's begin a torrid, somewhat unmotivated affair. Then she takes nude photos of him for a change. Uh-oh, that's the limit, too vulnerable a position for a man. Finally, she's off to London again as a photographer in her own right, and guess who walks into the salon...? Enough already.

I just found it more preposterous as it went on. I was more than willing to accept some off-the-beaten-track developments, but this was aimless messing about. No motivation or follow-through.

Take a lesson from me; avoid "The Governess".

1998 was a very good year for British movies. Awards and nominations were showered on a number of films, including Shakespeare in Love, Elizabeth, Waking Ned Divine, Little Voice and Gods and Monsters. There wasn't room for some of their other efforts to share the spotlight. The Governess, which certainly is as good as some of the honored choices, is one of them.

The Governess is decidedly not light fare. It takes place in the England of about 1840, when the class system - and therefore, prejudice - was still in power. Women had few legal rights, and the heroine of this story is Jewish. Jews were not oppressed in England, as they were elsewhere, but the times made it difficult for them to interact socially with Gentiles.

In Rosina, writer and director Sandra Goldbacker has fashioned a memorable, complex character, which Minnie Driver plays splendidly. Rosina is free-spirited and bohemian, but also shrew and intelligent. When her father dies suddenly, her family is left in debt. She is well educated for her time, but has no particular job skills. Like most girls then, it had always been presumed she would marry. She comes up with a plan to be a governess, but must pretend not to be Jewish, in order to obtain employment. So, she becomes Mary Blackchurch, and obtains a position on the Isle of Skye, off the coast of Scotland.

Her employers are the Cavanishes, an eccentric family, typical of people who live in isolated places. The family soon accepts her, and she discovers that all Christians are not the beasts she feared they would be. Of course, keeping her true identity a secret is still necessary.

Charles Cavandish [Tom Wilkinson] is a scientist working on an invention. He works strictly alone, but Mary's natural curiosity drives her to find out what he is doing in his lab. When he finds her out, he is so delighted to find someone interested in his work, he makes her his assistant. This sets the stage for a love affair which is heart-wrenching because it is obviously doomed.

I was fascinated by Rosina/Mary and by her love affair. Some have said they felt her character was too 90s. I have seen historical romances where this is true, but I do not think this is one of them. Regardless of what period of history we are looking at, the fact is that there have always been women who were independent, sensual and as smart as the men around them. If this character is too modern, then so is Scarlett O'Hara.

The Governess is not a commecial movie. It presumes a knowledge of history that most people simply do not care to have. You have to have some understanding of Jewish life in the early 19th Century. The invention Cavandish is working on has to do with photography. You also have to know that back then, the idea of capturing reality in a picture was a new and startling one. Without such knowledge, the movie will probably be a sleep aid.