The Governess

The story is not up to great things, oft told one way or another and smacking of Jane Austen romantic drama aspirations: a beautiful jewess of sephardi descent in 1830s London decides to take the job of governess to a little girl in a great big mansion supposedly on the Island of Skye, Inner Hebrides, Scotland (though I did glimpse a bit of Glencoe, Scottish mainland, and indeed what was definitely the beautiful Cuillins on Skye) where she falls in love with the master of the household, father of the little girl, and then the son falls in love with her. Well, that alone might have you wandering over to the next projection sala or just twiddling with the remote control, if it were not for certain other factors which may well be called redeeming, so good they are.

Minnie Driver certainly looks the beautiful jewess, but her interpretation goes a bit awry at times, or even careers off the rails; her performance has ups and downs of feelings and passions which do not really make much sense. Better directing might well have produced better results from Ms. Driver, as well as the fact that the focussing of the story is very much a feministic appreciation, rather slanted perhaps, forgiveably so I am not so sure, rather as if Ms. Goldbacher herself was brought up on the aforementioned Jane Austen, as well as Daphné du Maurier, a touch of the Brontës, and she finally spiced it all up with some misgivings from D.H. Lawrence. The result is a confusion of desire and sex being mistaken for romantic love. But don't we all, anyway?

The excellent photography and scenification makes up quite a lot for many of these pitfalls; the costumes and the settings of the interior of the house of such lucky landed-gentry is superb, as well as the scenes in London in the opening and closing parts of the film. This visual experience is greatly enhanced by the musical setting. Ed Shearmur has done an excellent job of creating his own `sephardi' music, helped by offerings from the Israeli singer, Ofra Haza. The music contributed greatly to the setting of scenes, ably supplying tone and atmosphere. Such that I feel one could enjoy this film solely for the photography, costumes and sets, and the music, and you could quite happily skip most of the story. It is not that the story is so bad, just that it is not anything special to write home to mother about, although she might well be the first to disagree.

The Sephardi songs made me remember an old recording I have of some very beautiful melodies sung by Soledad Bravo on a CBS record maybe 20 years ago and which might be found on a Sony CD. The intepretation of these songs, sung in `ladino' (sometimes called judezmo) which is an archaic form of today's Spanish, is pretty authentic. Ladino is still used today by descendents of people thrown out of Spain during the `Inquisición', and now living in parts of Turkey (specifically I found it being spoken in Izmir), Bulgaria, Macedonia, Montenegro and the Croatia coast. Within Israel of course, this language is pretty frequent.

Why all the negativity about this utterly brilliant motion picture? First of all, Minnie Driver is absolutely splendid. The entire film is beautiful to watch, the story palpably intelligent and erotic. The characters rich and spellbinding. I was enraptured by the first 5 minutes and the story never let me down. Tom Wilkinson was excellent as was Harriet Walter. A definite must see for lovers of intelligent period pieces. Very reminiscent visually of Jane Campion's "The Portrait of a Lady" and Shekhar Kapur's "Elizabeth." Too bad the film (and especially Driver's performance) got so little attention when it was released this summer. Rent it, and then decide how you feel.

Apart from being a well-acted, well-constructed film, "The Governess" should be seen by those interested both in Judaica and Romance studies. The film offers a unique occasion of hearing judezmo, the archaic Spanish spoken by Sefardi Jews, and getting acquainted with their splendid musical tradition (Classic songs, e.g. "Cuando el rey Nimrod", performed instrumentally and by Ofra Haza). It is also quite interesting to observe e.g. the characteristic head-dress worn by the protagonist when still in her London environment, and customs of the London Sefardi community as portrayed here.

I thought this movie was beautiful. It was somewhat overlooked in America when it was released in 1998, partly because it had to compete against some higher profile British films and partly because it is not commercial. It could not be sold to the general public for a very sad reason - most movie goers have absolutely no sense or knowledge of history. So, the story of being a Jewess in mid-19th Century England and Scotland would seem too odd to them. In addition, the average person might have difficulty in grasping how amazing photography was to people in those days.

For those who do have knowledge of history, I highly recommend this film. Some might say that Rosina [Minnie Driver] is too much of a modern character, but intelligent women, rebellious women and highly sensual women have ALWAYS existed, regardless of the morals and hypocrisies of the times they lived in.

After her father is murdered, Rosina (Minnie Driver) must marry without love or strike out and try something different. She changes her name and takes a job as a governess.

Of course, she also has to hide her Jewishness and learn to be a Protestant.

Her employer, Charles Cavendish (Tom Wilkinson) is a photographer working on a way to fix the photos he takes so that they last more than a day. She shows an interest in his work and spends her spare time helping. As expected, Minnie Drivers sensuality soon captivates him. He gives up his photographs of nature and gets into portraiture.

He realizes that he is not her intellectual equal and, when he discovers that he was in love with a Jewess, he turns very cruel.

She returns to London during a cholera epidemic, finding her mother dead. He new knowledge enable her family to survive, and she flourishes.

Driver was outstanding, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers was also good as the son.

Sandra Goldbacher's first feature film shows much promise.