The Handmaid's Tale

Taut, powerful, brilliantly lit, The Handmaid's Tale casts a spell, even as it spells out its dire warning. [09 Mar 1990, p.20]

Despite its shortcomings, however, the movie is often stimulating in a way that movies generally aren't. A dark, mirthless satire set in the near future, the film keeps your attention by holding a warped mirror up to our own time. [19 Mar 1990, p.C1]

If there can be a best-selling novel with a cult following, Margaret Atwood's feminist-futuristic The Handmaid's Tale qualifies. I'm not sure if the screen version has the stuff to become a cult movie - but if so, credit timeliness, visual style and a few performances. Most of all, timeliness. [07 Mar 1990, p.4D]

It's a beautifully austere piece of work -- it's rare to see a film these days that's as carefully designed as this one. But the design hasn't been given enough human contours. It's as if the film makers had forgotten the raging emotions that all that design and austerity were supposed to repress. [07 Mar 1990, p.F1]

The finale isn't quite as chillingly nerve-wracking as one would hope. Schloendorff, who also made The Tin Drum, directs with a uniform dullness that creates little sense of suspense. In replaying the Atwood novel, he and Pinter ultimately fail to create a significant timbre of their own to make the transmogrification truly effective.

The heavy-handed direction by Volker Schlondorff doesn't help to make the movie convincing or dramatically effective. [16 Mar 1990, p.54]

Hollywood has again turned a challenging book into negligible cinema. Forget the $13 million budget and the reputations involved. This Handmaid’s Tale is merely a piss-poor rehash of The Stepford Wives with delusions of grandeur.