Grand Isle

All I have to say is that once I saw "A Kelly McGillis Production" on the screen I should have turned it off. Too bad I had to watch it for a class. I have read the book that this is based on, called "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin. The novel is very good and is well-respected. It made me sad to see such a masterpiece butchered by this film. What I hated: The acting, the directing, the cinematography and the fact that EVERYTHING THE BOOK STOOD FOR WAS TRAMPLED BEYOND BELIEF! Despite that fact, the acting was terrible. First off, Madam Ratignolle, played by Glenne Headly, was abominable. For those who like the hear perhaps the worst French accent ever captured on film, I invited you to view this movie. I'm really going to dig in now, and talk about Kelly McGillis. She plays Edna, a confused and unique woman truly finding herself through an emotional "awakening," as Chopin originally intended. McGillis transformed Edna into a confused, unrealistic and terribly shallow excuse for a character. I'm being honest here folks, I honestly think the woman can't act (or at least in this movie). Her performance consists of butchered lines from the novel, spoken while looking off into the distance. After the delivery she will look down, smile to herself and shake her head, often continuing with another terribly adapted line from the film. Another amazingly poor part of this film was the direction. Often scenes would end with the screen going bright white, then fading in on another one. This was not a constant thing however, and any sort of theme it was supposed to represent of highlight is lost upon the viewer. The director seemed to lack any sort of ability to coax decent performances out of the actors, and I highly doubt that she had even read the novel.

One more complaint: the shooting itself. The camerawork was boring, typical and trivial. Also, the exposure was blurry, poorly-focused and B quality. Seriously, I wonder if they even used professional cameras to shoot this.

Overall, Grand Isle is a poor excuse for a movie. McGillis indulges herself in gratuitous nudity, often unrelated to anything that is going on. I am ashamed that one of our film industries would not only approve the script, but let McGillis have ANY sort of creative power over it. Folks, read the book. Pretend the movie doesn't exist. That is all I have to say. Thanks.

I totally disagree with what the first reviewer wrote- if you are comparing this film to a box office hit in the 21st century produced by a major mega-movie studio, fine, the comments are justified. But how fair is that seeing as this was made in 1991 as a Turner cable network original movie-- MADE FOR TV? As such, it is a very adequate film. I saw it (and taped it on a VHS cassette) when it first aired. I just revisited the tape tonight, almost 20 years later (and yes, VHS basic home-taped cassettes do last that long if you store them properly). I still feel after all these years that the movie is a very good adaptation of the original ground-breaking 19th century novel and all the book characters are true to form- which is much more than I can say about most movie adaptations of famous written works. The scenery is quite good, the cinematography is actually MUCH better than most TV movies from 1990 and the sets, costumes, locations, etc, quite appropriate to the portrayal of that time period and place. My favorite part of the movie is the playing of the Chopin nocturne as it captures the essence in music of what Kelly's character is feeling in her 'awakening'. I think for its time and audience, it is a very good movie, well worth the view if you can get past the fact that it is not a major studio production's multi-million dollar epic.

Beautifully staged and photographed, I did not find the film so bad as the first reviewer. McGillis is indeed turgid, but the other actors generally do at least as well as they should. Pasdar is, in fact, rather good.

More important, the movie does violence to the story in at least two important ways. First, Chopin in no way implies that Edna and Robert ever bedded one another. The movie, though we see no congress (as we do between Edna and Arobin), strongly implies they are in fact lovers, tainting their amour with the potential for guilt, of which the book knows nothing. Second, the movie jumps right past the real reason Robert decides to leave Edna, viz. because he wants to marry her, something she would not do if she could. The realization that her rather illusionary perception of Robert is off the mark is part of what sends her on the long swim. Even the man she has her heart set on would put her right back in the cage.

As the movie tells the story, Edna ends up a desperate housewife whose amour manqué ends in a punitive suicide. She'll show them! The story has problems enough without those deviations.