La geôlière

I really think that this movie might have been classified as one of James Spader's great movies if the story line wasn't so screwed up and half the movie wasn't based on sex alone. The movie concerns a lonely French girl who finds a shipwrecked sailor and tries to keep him for herself. The movie would be believable except it's quite impossible for 2 people to jump into bed and suddenly be in love with each other. I think the movie itself was quite good, cast well and filmed well with attention paid more to acting than material detail. Get rid of the mentally disturbed and the distasteful sex and you've got a great movie.

This movie gives a good idea of the state of Irish cinema today. Anne Brochet gave an interesting performance with a very French accent--one of the annoying factors in a film set in Ireland. One can understand if the castaway had a French accent but not a character who is supposed to be a denizen of Ireland. James Spader gives an uninspired performance.

The minor roles were were well played.

The most uplifting part of the film was the song at the end which was better than the rest of the film.

You don't really notice it at first, but Anne Brochet is deceptively cute. Intitially she seems almost plain, then you get a crush on her and think it is your own special crush. Then you realize she was Roxanne in Cyrano with Depardieau. Anyway, this is an interesting little movie about obsession and deception and Spader is interesting, even when doing mundane things.

When an unknown man with amnesia (Spader) is washed up on a secluded beach of Northern Ireland, he is taken in by a solitary eccentric spinster (Brochet)and it becomes immediately apparent that she has "control issues." Since he has a broken leg, he's temporarily at her mercy and tries to humor her as she becomes increasingly strange. Brochet plays "Sarah" so well that the viewer soon surmises that beneath her elfin winsomeness lies some dangerous emotional and mental instability which will eventually erupt. She succeeds in seducing the stranger and thereafter regards him as her personal possession. The arguments with her old harpy of a mother are telling. When the couple have a special candlelit dinner commemorating his sexual surrender, she appears wearing a weird lacy gown strongly suggesting the mad Miss Havisham in "Great Expectations." Viewer interest will be maintained until the inevitable tragic result of the man breaking free of the coerced relationship which bears a familiar parallel in reverse to "The Collector."

I liked this movie.

The acting was good and the story believable.

The woman had a morbid fear of abandonment and intended to keep the man at all costs.

The man's amnesia, though never explained, was credible, and so was his desire to leave.

Their sexual relationship was understandable and probably inevitable.

The story unfolded naturally, and I cared about the characters. I was never bored and never felt that the action was too slow. It held my interest.

I found the epilogue believable, ironic, likely, and haunting.