Whether it's one of the greatest authors of the 19th century or a modern day
rock musician, comely Brit actress Felicity Jones' characters are always
seducing married men. In Drake Doremus' recent indie-darling
Breathe In she
charmed the pants off of Guy Pearce and sent his married into a tailspin. But
in Ralph Fiennes'
The Invisible Woman, the veil of fiction is tossed
aside for the true story of Ellen "Nelly" Ternan, who had a
long-standing affair with celebrated writer Charles Dickens. While she slips
comfortably into the Victorian piece alongside Fiennes, who also directs the
film, it falls into many of the stuffy and passionless trappings the genre has
too often been mired in.
The truth behind Dickens' affair with Ternan was a closely-guarded secret
for some sixty years after the author's death, only coming to light in 1933,
and then gaining wider audience in 1990 due to
Claire Tomalin's novel from
which the film is based. When we first meet the titular character she's known
as Nelly Warton, a schoolteacher who has settled for a quiet life married to
George Wharton, a decent enough guy but hardly has the intellectual curiosity
or voracious appetite for life to keep her interest. Instead she reflects upon
the one man who was her equal in every way, Charles Dickens, who years earlier
she had embarked upon a scandalous romance.
Dickens had been a similar marital situation when he was first introduced to
Ternan as she was acting in one of his plays, and the gregarious, Victorian-era
celebrity immediately took a liking to her. His oversized personality was too
much for his own wife Catherine (Joanna Scanlon) to handle, and she doesn't
seem to particularly care much about his work. So it's no surprise that Dickens
is drawn to the pouty-lipped Ternan, who can quote his novels and appears
genuinely affected by his writing. Plus, as the film takes every opportunity to
make clear, the portly Catherine is no contender in the looks department. But
she's still the mother of Dickens' ten children, and social propriety being
what it is; he can't really divorce her for fear of personal and professional
reprisal.
Screenwriter Abi Morgan (
Shame) wants this to be a film about the
women in Dickens' life, and the title could rightly apply to either Ternan or
poor, mistreated Catherine. Both exist in a form of romantic purgatory
where Dickens must maintain his marriage publicly while continuing to hold the
former as his not-so-secret mistress. It's in the depiction of Catherine that
we see not only the sad state of affairs for women in such a repressive era,
but also how cruel Dickens could be. In one particularly ugly scene, he forces
Catherine to give an extravagant gift to Ternan after it was sent to her by
mistake. The look of sad resignation to the state of her failed marriage is
heartbreaking. It also makes it tough for us to sympathize with Ternan, who
knowingly leaped into her relationship with Dickens, mostly at the behest of
her mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) who saw the potential in such an arrangement.
The film struggles mightily to convince us that Dickens and Ternan's illicit
love is one that was meant to be, only held back by conservative social
conventions neither could control. But to do that, the emphasis must repeatedly
turn back to Dickens who hides his unhappy personal life with a public image
that would have him on TMZ nowadays. The end result is that we learn little
about Ternan and care even less about her plight, especially when it’s revealed
she and Dickens maintained this arrangement for thirteen years. Morgan tries
unsuccessfully to add an air of inevitability, but there's not enough passion
or chemistry between Jones and Fiennes to pull that off.
Fiennes, who made his directorial debut with the far-superior
Coriolanus a
couple of years ago, directs in drab tones that underscore the film's
blandness. It's understandable to a degree that Fiennes would want to depict
this quiet, secret affair with a lower emotional pitch but it never raises
above that level, even when the situation would seem to call for it. Better are
the individual performances, notably by Fiennes as the gregarious but lonely
author. Those who have followed the film's development may remember that it was
Jones cast first, with Fiennes agreeing to star only much later on. Jones give
it her all, capturing in measured doses Ternan's utter devotion to Dickens, but
the lack of heart in Morgan's script affects her character the most, and the
lack of connection with Fiennes is a major problem. Without a passionate
central love story that we want to see beat the odds, all of the period
costumes and attention to detail aren't enough to make
The Invisible Woman worthy
of being seen.
The truth behind Dickens' affair with Ternan was a closely-guarded secret
for some sixty years after the author's death, only coming to light in 1933,
and then gaining wider audience in 1990 due to Claire Tomalin's novel from
which the film is based. When we first meet the titular character she's known
as Nelly Warton, a schoolteacher who has settled for a quiet life married to
George Wharton, a decent enough guy but hardly has the intellectual curiosity
or voracious appetite for life to keep her interest. Instead she reflects upon
the one man who was her equal in every way, Charles Dickens, who years earlier
she had embarked upon a scandalous romance.
Dickens had been a similar marital situation when he was first introduced to
Ternan as she was acting in one of his plays, and the gregarious, Victorian-era
celebrity immediately took a liking to her. His oversized personality was too
much for his own wife Catherine (Joanna Scanlon) to handle, and she doesn't
seem to particularly care much about his work. So it's no surprise that Dickens
is drawn to the pouty-lipped Ternan, who can quote his novels and appears
genuinely affected by his writing. Plus, as the film takes every opportunity to
make clear, the portly Catherine is no contender in the looks department. But
she's still the mother of Dickens' ten children, and social propriety being
what it is; he can't really divorce her for fear of personal and professional
reprisal. 
Screenwriter Abi Morgan (Shame) wants this to be a film about the
women in Dickens' life, and the title could rightly apply to either Ternan or
poor, mistreated Catherine. Both exist in a form of romantic purgatory
where Dickens must maintain his marriage publicly while continuing to hold the
former as his not-so-secret mistress. It's in the depiction of Catherine that
we see not only the sad state of affairs for women in such a repressive era,
but also how cruel Dickens could be. In one particularly ugly scene, he forces
Catherine to give an extravagant gift to Ternan after it was sent to her by
mistake. The look of sad resignation to the state of her failed marriage is
heartbreaking. It also makes it tough for us to sympathize with Ternan, who
knowingly leaped into her relationship with Dickens, mostly at the behest of
her mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) who saw the potential in such an arrangement.
The film struggles mightily to convince us that Dickens and Ternan's illicit
love is one that was meant to be, only held back by conservative social
conventions neither could control. But to do that, the emphasis must repeatedly
turn back to Dickens who hides his unhappy personal life with a public image
that would have him on TMZ nowadays. The end result is that we learn little
about Ternan and care even less about her plight, especially when it’s revealed
she and Dickens maintained this arrangement for thirteen years. Morgan tries
unsuccessfully to add an air of inevitability, but there's not enough passion
or chemistry between Jones and Fiennes to pull that off.
Fiennes, who made his directorial debut with the far-superior Coriolanus a
couple of years ago, directs in drab tones that underscore the film's
blandness. It's understandable to a degree that Fiennes would want to depict
this quiet, secret affair with a lower emotional pitch but it never raises
above that level, even when the situation would seem to call for it. Better are
the individual performances, notably by Fiennes as the gregarious but lonely
author. Those who have followed the film's development may remember that it was
Jones cast first, with Fiennes agreeing to star only much later on. Jones give
it her all, capturing in measured doses Ternan's utter devotion to Dickens, but
the lack of heart in Morgan's script affects her character the most, and the
lack of connection with Fiennes is a major problem. Without a passionate
central love story that we want to see beat the odds, all of the period
costumes and attention to detail aren't enough to make The Invisible Woman worthy
of being seen.
