The French Lieutenant's Woman [Blu-ray] On Sale

Title : The French Lieutenant's Woman [Blu-ray]
Category: Movies
Brand: Criterion Collection (Direct)
Item Page Download URL : Download Movie
Rating : 4.0
Buyer Review : 97









Review :
"It was as if her torture had become her delight."
Harold Pinter's screenplay of John Fowles's novel, combined with Karel Reisz's direction, creates a stunning vehicle for Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons as they bring an enigmatic 19th century love story to life. But this film is actually two love stories. Streep and Irons also play contemporary actors making a film of the 19th century love story, and their relationship clearly parallels the story they are filming. Sarah Woodruff (Streep), known as "the French Lieutenant's woman," is an outcast in mid-19th century Lyme Regis, where she lives, because she has broken the taboos of society. Needing work to stay alive, she must accept the stultifying strictures of Victorian society and work as a governess or lady's companion, or become a prostitute, the only other option open for a woman without an inheritance or family.

Charles Smithson (Jeremy Irons), an amateur geologist and Darwinian in the early story, is the rather stuffy fiancé of Ernestina Freeman (Lynsey...
"I have a freedom they cannot understand."
"Outside of marriage, your Victorian gentleman could look forward to 2.4 f*cks a week," Mike (Jeremy Irons) coolly calculates after Anna (Meryl Streep) has read to him the statistics according to which, while London's male population in 1857 was 1 1/4 million, the city's estimated 80,000 prostitutes were receiving a total of 2 million clients per week. And frequently, Anna adds, the women thus forced to earn their living came from respectable positions like that of a governess, simply having fallen into bad luck, e.g. by being discharged after a dispute with their employer and their resulting inability to find another position.

This brief dialogue towards the beginning of this movie based on John Fowles's 1969 novel succinctly illustrates both the fate that would most likely have been in store for title character Sarah (Meryl Streep in her "movie within the movie" role), had she left provincial Lyme Regis on Dorset's Channel coast and gone to London, and the Victorian...
Film Acting At It's Best
It's a real shame that so few people have seen this film. It is a hidden treasure. Streep and Irons play present-day actors who are making a film about two people having an affair in Victorian England. The actors themselves are also involved in an affair, making the story a sort of movie-within-a-movie. I have not read the Fowles novel, so I don't have any of the gripes that other reviewers have voiced. I can only tell you that the story, the performances, the settings, the cinematography and the writing are all first-rate. All connected with this film obviously took a lot of time and effort to make a visually stunning film. It still looks great 20 years after its release, and looks even better on DVD (despite the fact that the disc offers no extras except the theatrical trailer...oh well...). Even if you end up hating the story, I don't think anyone would complain about the superior performances by Irons and Streep.
Possibly the reason this film has been largely...