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Fantasy book author William Nicholson made his first and so far only effort at movie-direction with this 1997 English Gothic romance based on his own screenplay. Sophie Marceau (the French princess in Braveheart) plays a Swiss governess named Elizabeth in late 1830s England. Desperate to pay a family debt, she sells herself to an anonymous English gentlemen for three days in his efforts to produce an heir for his family. Harsh and uncaring at first, they fall in love, but both have agreed never to see or speak to each other again for the sake of keeping up appearances. Elizabeth conceives a baby girl who is wisked away seconds after birth. Heartbroken, Elizabeth writes letters to "My English Daughter" until she can no longer keep her promise. Seven years after the baby's birth she tracks the child down; now a spoiled brat living on a remote Sussex estate. The daughter acts up as she pines for her usually absent father. Her father's wife has been in a vegetative state for a decade after a riding accident, and even the the daughter knows she is not the real mother. Elizabeth takes a job as the girl's governess to be close to her, unbeknownst to the girl's father. When the father, Charles Godwin, returns from London he is appalled at the mother of his child showing up again in his life as well as the rekindling of a romantic fire he has desperately tried to convince himself is long burnt out. Themes of duty to family, maternal love, and desperate attempts to hold back passion are played out in perpetually foggy and snowswept landscapes and around fireplaces in the Godwin Victorian mansion.

Performances by the actors are uniformly excellent. Marceau and Stephen Dillane as Charles Godwin share a chemistry rarely captured on film; but also look for Dominique Belcourt as the daughter; Lia Williams as Godwin's long-suffering sister-in-law; Kevin Anderson as the visiting American who falls for Elizabeth; and veteran British actor Joss Ackland as Godwin's father whose self-indulgent hedonism dooms the family to ruin. It's never apparent that this is Nicholson's first time out as a director. Nic Morris's cinematography of the English countryside and Marceu's exquisitely beautiful face lit by firelight is something to see, and Christopher Gunning's string-laden score is dramatic and over-the-top which it really should be.

Although rife with gray and icy colors, painful family obligation, stark settings, heartbreak, euthanasia, held back emotions, and rigid social mores; the underlying theme of the Firelight is that true love conquers all. It's never really gotten the attention it deserves.

Released by Disney's Hollywood pictures, the movie played briefly in American arthouses back in 1998 and was released on VHS the next year to very little fanfare. Disillusioned, Nicholson never directed a picture again, although he hit paydirt when he co-wrote the script to Ridley Scott's Gladiator in 2000. Firelight has been sporadically available since then on demand on the Encore movie cable channel. A Region 0 bare-bones DVD was released in Hong Kong of all places; it's available on Amazon.com and ebay. If you find a copy, it's definitely worth purchasing.

This is a wonderful movie about how a woman's love can overcome major obstacles. Sophie Marceau is a beautiful governess, who seven years prior was hired by a rich Englishman to conceive a baby because the man's own wife had been seriously injured but did not die after a riding accident. Marceau's motivation is to pay her father's debts and get him out of prison. Thus the two principal characters are having this weekend "affair" out of a sense of duty to others. Unlike many movies set in the mid-19th century, the rich people in this movie are not one dimensional and heartless, and the poor people are not powerless victims. Marceau manages to track down her child after 6 years and becomes her governess. The girl has become a spoiled brat, and Marceau is the first to teach the girl how to read, and much about life. There is not exactly a happy ending, in the Hollywood sense. In order to get something, one must take risks and be willing to give up other things.

The title led me to expect "Firelight" would be a "chick flick", yet the inclusion of the beautiful Sophie Marceau made viewing imperative. The astonishing credibility of the actors' performances was aided by an impeccable script coupled with masterful direction. Add to that award-winning cinematography and achingly beautiful music reminiscent of gypsy violins and the result is an extremely moving love story. How this film came to be ignored by the US public is one of the great mysteries of our time.

Every word, every sigh, every gesture and every scene appears uncontrived yet at the same time is testament to breathtaking genius. If only director William Nicholson would bring his ensemble together again for more of the same! Just thinking about "Firelight" brings tears to my eyes. No other movie has had such an effect on me.

File this one under "U" for "Unforgettable" in the illustrated dictionary.

The artistry of this movie is not evident the first time you watch it because you notice nothing but the actors' brown eyes and the blue cold rooms of the mansion.

But watch it a few more times and you realize how balanced the story is, how themes of birth and death parallel heat and cold, love and hate.

The script is simple because silence and secrecy drive the plot. Compared to Jane Eyre, it is rather sparse, but so what?

I gave it a 10.

This film really made me search the net high and low to read more about it, and to see whether other people think the same. Here, I found out that many people think the same.

Searching the web, as I said, I also ran across the director's statement that I cite here:

Inspired by Nicholson's fascination with 1940s movie love stories, Firelight is a film that awakens the romantic spirit in each of us. For his film directorial debut, Nicholson wanted to create a boundless romantic story about lovers forced apart by outside forces. To do so, he had to set his story in another place and time. "To achieve that old-fashioned level of romance," the writer/director asserts, "I had to go back to a place and time when there were forces stronger than individual desires. Contemporary love stories are relationship stories because the obstacles that prevent people from loving each other are essentially self-induced. These kind of stories can be charming, but you can't build up an enormous head of steam with them. I wanted to create a story about how love can redeem people, about how it can totally change their lives. I wanted to create that tragic feeling you have when two people are perfect for each other, love each other, but yet cannot have one another." Nicholson set out to write a film in which the focus was on people and their emotions. As he worked on the screenplay, Nicholson developed a very clear and simple visual style for the film. "I wanted people's feelings to be the central issue of the film and I wanted nothing to distract from that. The idea of firelight became central to what the film is about. The story is about light, about winter, about coldness and empty rooms where the eye goes toward the one source of heat, the fire.

To conceive a good film is one thing, but to make it, is altogether different, sometimes very hard. Nicholson succeeded fantastically but praises must be given to all the cast as well, Sophie first.