La servante écarlate

The handmaids in brilliant red, the wives in electric blue, the children in white--Margaret Atwood's neo-fascist state comes startingly alive in Schloendorff's film. The bright colors are oppressive in their uniformity, whether in the "ceremony"--Robert Duvall's passionless copulation with Natasha Richardson as she lies in the lap of his sterile wife, Faye Dunaway--or in the party to celebrate the birth of a handmaid's child, or the execution of another handmaid for fornication. There are several fine actors--Elizabeth McGovern and Aidan Quinn also play memorable, if brief, roles--but the cinematography steals the show here, giving this anti-Utopia the same oppressive tension as the original 1984 and far surpassing any version of Brave New World. It may be that Atwood's book, which I haven't read, adds layers of depth to the characters and plot, but Schloendorff's visualisation is a real enhancement to the tale. He creates the tension of a police state with only momentary intrusions of brutality or machinery. A strong film that will gain its following with time.

There's nothing subtle about this screen adaptation of Margaret Atwood's cautionary fable, but the premise is nothing if not provocative: in a repressive fundamentalist dictatorship (called Gilead, but ostensibly America in the near future) the few remaining fertile women are forced to bear children, in effect becoming sexual servants to the (male) powers-that-be. Gilead may be colored red, white and blue, but there's more than a passing resemblance to Orwell's Oceana; even the act of conception is reduced to a ritual, with the euphemism 'ceremony' doubling for intercourse. A talented cast does its best with Harold Pinter's typically inscrutable screenplay, but under Volker Schlondorff's dispassionate direction the film never achieves a convincing level of oppression or paranoia. Worse, it lacks a story to match its scenario; the handmaid Offred's redemption is achieved only with the help of another man, which seems to deflate the feminist slant. The final result is nowhere near a successful movie, but never less than a fascinating failure.

Margaret Atwood's acclaimed novel, adapted for the screen and turned into a high-minded but posed, uncomfortable human drama, despite an expert cast. Taking place in the soulless distant future, all young women have been turned into child-breeders for wealthy, infertile couples, with Natasha Richardson assigned to nightmarish twosome Robert Duvall and Faye Dunaway. Elizabeth McGovern plays a lesbian who hopes to make a break for it (every totalitarian society should have one). Certainly watchable, though an icy cold presentation which promises to be much more than it is. Richardson doesn't flash a hint of her feisty personality, though McGovern is very good and Duvall does what he can with a terrible role. ** from ****

An unfortunate movie which is definitely more like Harold Pinter's earlier plays than anything Margaret Atwood ever produced. No attempt is made to bring out Atwood's clever social message, and we're all supposed to be shocked at the sexual content. A shame, because Atwood's version might have made a good film.

This movie is about what can happen when religious nuts take over the country's government. People who are different are either killed or enslaved in one way or another. Let's see...we have murder and public display of anyone who isn't of the religion that took over....women who are fertile enslaved for religious higher-up's in the government...anyone who's different, and ISN'T killed enslaved in radioactive areas...makes you realize why people fight so hard against religion intruding into politics. Like the scholars from the future of this story who have a hard time believing it actually happened, despite hearing the story with their own ears, people nowadays don't believe that "people of God" in government would be so bad. Watch this movie and think on it. This is why there's a separation of church and state.