Fingersmith

This movie was incredible!!!! I did not know the back story on it so I needed to let it unfold before me on DVD. It had many twists and turns but still kept the story fresh and exciting. The acting by Elaine Cassidy was in a word Brilliant as well as Sally Hawkins. The storyline is rich with plausible occurrences as well as fresh ideas from the present.

There is truly something about Ms. Cassidy's eyes that leaves "a mark." This movie is a refreshing look on the way in which we look at the 'victorian times' and how we view that society. A very worthwhile watch.

It is always difficult to bring a 450 pages book down to a three hours film. I read the book before, and I found the BBC production dealing with this difficulty in the best way possible. The qualities of the book haven't been lost: the dense and lively depiction of a fingersmith patchwork family in London in the 1860s, the cold and obscene cruelty in which Maud is brought up, the characterization of different social groups by different ways of speaking, the unexpected and surprising twists of the story, the way the film makes the spectators look different at the same scenes when they are told first from Sue's point of view then from Maud's one. The main actors do very good, and especially the growing love between the two women is convincingly developed, with a first culmination in a very tender love scene between the two and finally forgiving all the evil they were ready to do and did to each other, because they still love each other.

For each of her books the author, Sarah Waters, has thoroughly investigated what life was like in British 19th century. While in Tipping the Velvet it was the world of the vaudeville theaters and the beginning of social movements, in Affinity the dreadful reality of women penitentiaries and the fashionable evocation of spirits, in Fingersmith she depicts the public ceremony of hanging people in London and the inhuman treatment of persons supposed or declared disturbed in asylums based on the reading of sources and scientific research. This is very well transferred to the film so that the corresponding scenes show a high grade of historic truth. I highly recommend this film production because it offers three hours of colorful Victorian atmosphere, vivid emotions, and suspense.

A superbly-acted adaptation of Sarah Waters' novel, hobbled somewhat by the tacky mid-2000s BBC aesthetic (the editing is almost spastic at times) and the sense that 3 hours was somehow both too much and not enough time to tell this tale. Then again, "The Handmaiden" - which I've yet to see - is nearly as long. Maybe it finds the right balance.

The incredible chemistry between Sally Hawkins and Elaine Cassidy carries the first episode, so of course the second can only suffer in comparison, but what I really wanted was time for scenes to breathe and unfold. There's so much plot to cover that the pace becomes frantic, with increasingly loopy twist upon twist, when all I care about is seeing these two find each other (again). Every furtive glance, every time they dare to even try being honest with their words, is more riveting than who is conning who at any given moment.

Back when I reviewed "Portrait of a Lady on Fire," I suggested that no film in the English language could ever evoke the feel of love and passion the way the French do. (Get outta here with your BS, "Ammonite.") This is not the exception to that rule, but damn if it doesn't come close.

Skill fully evocative of Dickens, Collins and Conan Doyle this is top draw story telling. All the performers rise to the occasion and what a great twist at the end of an already serpentine plot.

I never dreamed when I started watching this DVD that I would be totally mesmerized by it within minutes. The story was completely absorbing and entertaining. The acting was superb. The biggest surprise of all was how I would be so completely enchanted by the love these two young women radiated across the screen. Their initial physical encounter for me was by far the most tender, romantic, delightful, vicariously enthralling love scenes I have ever witnessed on film. I literally stopped breathing. I could not believe the chemistry between the two actresses. With no nudity or graphic sex, they conveyed more passion and titillation than any American production could ever hope to evince. Bravo to the author, the screenwriter, the director and the cast.