SummaryA film is being made of a story, set in 19th century England, about Charles, a biologist who's engaged to be married, but who falls in love with outcast Sarah, whose melancholy makes her leave him after a short, but passionate affair. Anna and Mike, who play the characters of Sarah and Charles, go, during the shooting of the film, through a relat... Read More
Directed By:Karel Reisz
Written By:John Fowles, Harold Pinter, Karel Reisz
The French Lieutenant's Woman
Metascore
Generally Favorable
64
User score
Generally Favorable
7.4
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Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
64
50% Positive
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
50% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
88
The French Lieutenant’s Woman is a beautiful film to look at, and remarkably well-acted.
70
The French Lieutenant's Woman is one of the most civilized and provocative movies of the year, but it falls just short of greatness. Perhaps Reisz and Pinter are too innately reticent to wring the last drop of emotional power from Fowles's story. [21 Sep 1981, p.96]
70
The casting of Meryl Streep as Sarah/Anna could not have been better. Sarah comes complete with unbridled passions and Anna is the cool, detached professional. There is never a false note in the sharply contrasting characters.
60
Meryl Streep gives an immaculate, technically accomplished performance as Sarah Woodruff, the romantic mystery woman of John Fowles' novel, but she isn't mysterious. We're not fascinated by Sarah; she's so distanced from us that all we can do is observe how meticulous Streep -- and everything else about the movie -- is.
60
Sufficiently attractive and absorbing to sustain the fond delusion that Charles' pursuit of the mystifying Sarah might culminate in a revealing, conclusive confrontation. [02 Oct 1981, p.C1]
50
Two great beginnings disappoint in the end. If the novel is a dying form, film treatments are the poison. [21 Sep 1981]
50
A rather poetic costume drama jarringly interrupted by bits of modern banality. [02 Oct 1981, p.17]
User score
Generally Favorable
7.4
77% Positive
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
23% Mixed
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
Oct 9, 2022
10
This is a flawlessly done "twofor" film. It focuses on a Victorian era romantic drama between a proper but somewhat eccentric young gentleman and a woman with a troubled history, and pairs that with the story of an affair between two actors playing those parts in a film. Everything about it is right - the sets, the locations, Streep, Irons, Pinter's screenplay adapted from Fowles's novel - it all clicks into place. The climactic revelation is superb - it is unexpected, but in retrospect it makes perfect sense. One could complain that, like a lot of British films, it focuses too much on the issue of class (and gender roles) in British society and how those things undermine a person's individuality, but it does so in the context of an affecting story.
