WASHINGTON SQUARE |
| CREDITS: Director: Agnieszka Holland. Cast: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Albert Finney, Ben
Chaplin & Maggie Smith. USA 1997 (PG) INTRODUCTION: Yet another Henry James adaptation trundles off of the production line and onto the silver screen. Is there still a market left for this stuff? SYNOPSIS: Young heiress Catherine Sloper (Leigh) is wooed by poor lad about town Morris Townsend (Chaplin), despite her complete lack of grace and charm, and while her hormonal aunt and governess (Smith) positively encourages the tryst, her overbearing father (Finney) is, to say the least, less than pleased, believing the boy to be a gold digger. REVIEW: It was of course all done better by William Wyler with his 1949 big screen adaptation which one legendary costume designer Edith Head won her first Oscar as well as securing the best actress Oscar for a youthful Olivia De Haviland. While Leigh is wonderfully gawky in the lead role she should not be expecting a repetition of De Haviland's success. Chaplin plays his difficult part with suitable ambiguity, to leave doubt in the audience's mind, while Finney is so brilliantly overbearing to dispel aforesaid doubt completely. Meanwhile Smith hams it up in blissful oblivion to her surroundings. The plot, while far from original, I seem to remember a Henry James novel with a vaguely similar theme, has a wonderfully twisted ending with that fatal 90's cop out of suddenly turning the heroine into a feminist well ahead of her times. Uninspired by-the-book (or not as the case may be) adaptation saved by some fine performances. Mutt's Rating: ** |