Mrs. Soffel - Um Amor Proibido

Australian director Gillian Armstrong makes great films with strong women characters--her earlier Australian film "My brilliant career" being a perfect example. I watched "Mrs. Soffel" because of my admiration for Armstrong and found that "Mrs. Soffel" could not hold a candle to "My brilliant career" even though American actress Diane Keaton was admirable compared to the Australian actresses in the latter.

Armstrong had the talented Australian cinematographer Russel Boyd (who was responsible for the seminal works of Peter Weir and Bruce Beresford) once again to work with. While Armstrong and Boyd used justifiably darkened interior shots, I had problems seeing anything for long periods and had to rely on the soundtrack!

Armstrong loves to develop the female characters but leaves the male characters totally undeveloped (Mr Soffel and Jack Biddle). This is one reason I prefer the works of Weir and Beresford over Armstrong--even though her latent talent cannot be ignored. It is amazing to see Soffel's daughter getting equal or more prominence in the script than Mr Soffel towards the end.

Mel Gibson has made a name for himself by directing "Braveheart," but I give more credence to his acting phase in Australia ("Tim", "Mad Max", etc.). I am convinced that he is a director's actor--doing well with good directors. In "Mrs Soffel" Armstrong has evidently invested time with Diane Keaton, who carries the film. Gibson only lends support to her thanks more to the script than his acting capabilities.

Most of the fine tribe of Australian filmmakers of the Seventies have drifted to the US to become richer and gain international recognition--but their work in Australia in the Seventies remains unsurpassed.

This is a visually beautiful movie bringing the story along in with obvious and subtle references.

The title character is a trapped woman. The 'noblesse oblige'of being the warden's wife coupled with her own frustrations and frailties makes her life intolerable. She loves her children; she hates her life.

Here, she becomes intrigued by a prisoner in her husband's jail. He appeals to her imagination as well as her sensibility as a woman. She finds a soul-mate in their exchanges as she pretends to read-him-to-reform from bible passages. She flees with him and is willing to die with him to keep from returning to her unbearable life.

This is based on a true story. But it is a telling of the story of women, most of whom until the last 25 years or so, had little choice but to marry and to identify themselves in terms of their husbands. Their identity was not their own; their choices had to be appropriate to their marriage station; they were judged by how well they maintained husband's well being and their children's achievements.

While much has changed in women's lives, vestiges of the past still do exist. The references to "baking cookies" in the 2004 presidential campaign signals this.

Mrs. Soffel represents the lives of women over time. She desperately seeks the love and freedom that her standing in life denies her. This has been a common women's theme.

It's 1901 Pittsburgh. Kate Soffel (Diane Keaton) is the wife of prison warden Peter Soffel (Edward Herrmann). Ed Biddle (Mel Gibson) and Jack Biddle (Matthew Modine) are brothers on death row for murder although they claim to be innocent. Kate befriends Ed. It grows into a romance and she helps them escape.

This is based on a true story. It doesn't always make it compelling. I can do with a lot less of the courting in the first half. It is terribly boring and terribly long. It takes an hour before they escape. The escape and the fugitive stages have a bit more tension which this movie sorely needs. As for the romance, it's hard to know Ed's true feelings until they become fugitives on the run. Keaton and Gibson do try to generate some heat at that point. It's a 50-50 proposition. It feels more like a romance novel. The most compelling scenes happen in the last five minutes. It is a very long slough to get there.

"Mrs. Soffel" is a wonderful movie I have seen many times, but the last viewing was so many years ago I'm watching it right now on TCM.

I'm a sucker for movies whose main characters suddenly, inexplicably make a decision which goes against everything they seem to embody, or at least that which the viewer has come to know about them. That Kate Soffel's story is a true one makes it all the more intriguing.

In early 20th-century America, the lot of a wife, even that of a well-to-do-man and mother to lovely children, was a lonely, empty, barren existence. In a wealthy household with servants, there was very little meaningful work for the mistress of the house to do every day.

Even the layers upon layers of clothes Victorian women wore served no practical purpose except to restrict movement and render their wearers merely decorative. Express your opinions and you got packed off to visit relatives in hopes that maybe the change of scenery would "do you good." There were millions of avenues for creative expression and enterprise that were simply cut off for women.

Good minds went to waste. Souls shriveled and died.

Kate Soffel (Diane Keaton) was the wife of a prison warden in Pittsburgh at the turn of the last century. She served as something of a missionary to the prisoners, giving them Bibles, holding prayer readings with them and hoping to guide them towards remorse and redemption. She never expects to fall in love with one of the inmates. But fall she does, for the charming Ed Biddle (Mel Gibson), who along with his brother Jack, (Matthew Modine) are in jail on murder charges.

Kate is suffocating; the Biddles are desperate. Prone to fits of melancholy and depression, plagued with fears that she is not a good mother and that she has failed her husband -- whom she has come to learn she really doesn't know very well -- Kate, like so many women of her era, is desperate for something to end the tedium, the frustration, the despair. She is a perfect candidate for the dangerous voyage she helps plan and sets out on with the Biddle brothers.

"Mrs. Soffel" raises many ethical and moral issues, among them the divergent path Kate takes from her religious teachings, and the Biddle brothers' guilt or innocence. It can be appreciated equally on one or more levels, but it remains a remarkably restrained depiction of emotions and passion that are anything but.

Mel Gibson's performance in "Mrs. Soffel" is superb in any event, but viewed in the context that it is the first time he played an American character on film, that his brother was played by American actor Matthew Modine, and that the film was based on a true story of two men from Pittsburgh, it is an even greater achievement.