The French Lieutenant’s Woman - Karel Reisz

John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman is one of the great post-modernist novels, a work high on style but also incredibly engaging as a story. Adapting it to the screen in a way that would retain the book’s spirit must have been a Herculean task, but between them, director Karel Reisz and screenwriter Harold Pinter managed it, creating a film that feels true to the source in every way. Released in 1981, it has aged very well and remains incredibly watchable and enjoyable.

The film unfolds on two levels, as a story and a story within that story. The first (the “real” story) involves the making of a film version of The French Lieutenant’s Woman starring Anna (Meryl Streep) and Mike (Jeremy Irons) as the novel’s doomed lovers Sarah and Charles. The second layer of story (the “fictional” story) is the one that plays out between Sarah and Charles in the film adaptation. The screenplay moves back and forth freely between the two stories, showing the ways that Anna and Mike’s relationship begins to mirror that of their characters.

The fictional story is set in the Victorian era and centers on Charles, a palaeontologist set to marry Ernestina, the daughter of a wealthy tradesman with whom he can imagine building a comfortable life but who doesn’t engage him on a particularly deep intellectual level. His life, however, is content until he encounters Sarah, also known as “Tragedy” and “The French Lieutenant’s Whore” due to her affair with a French officer who used and abandoned her. Charles is intrigued by her and meets with her in secret in an attempt to discover the truth behind the rumours - only when they finally consummate their relationship does he learn that she is not the fallen woman he supposed.

In the real story Anna and Mike have an affair as they work to develop their characters and rehearse the more emotionally fraught scenes. Anna is involved with a man named David and Mike is married with children, though that doesn’t seem to give either of the two pause in terms of entering into their affair, nor does it make them particularly inclined to discretion. Early in the film Mike answers Anna’s morning wakeup call and she remarks that now everyone will know he spent the night in her room. Neither is really concerned about this as both are so caught up in the magic of an on-location romance, the kind of liaison destined to end as soon as the film is over and each returns to their real lives. However, Mike – who, arguably has a lot more to lose – is a lot more caught up than Anna and in that sense he mirrors the character that he’s playing. Both Mike and Charles have romanticized notions about the future they can have with their respective love interests and they fail to fully take into consideration the consequences of getting swept away, whereas Anna and Sarah have a more realistic understanding of things and end up going on the defensive. It’s telling that in the film’s final moments Anna runs from Mike and he calls out “Sarah!” after her.

The reason that The French Lieutenant’s Woman works as well as it does is that it invests itself fully in both stories. Either one on its own would make for an engrossing and engaging story but when they are laid side-by-side as in the movie, it makes for a film that is basically having a conversation with itself about the act of creating story and character. It manages to do this without being overly didactic, examining how the narrative has been put together without sacrificing what makes the narrative itself compelling. It’s an ambitious film because it aims to be three things: a compelling period piece, a compelling behind-the-scenes movie, and a cohesive blend of both. It accomplishes this in a way that seems effortless – it isn’t showy about what it’s doing, but instead proceeds in a way that feels understated and rather casual.

By now Streep and Irons have both accumulated so many wonderful performances that you’d likely have difficulty whittling them down to top 10s and might even end up passing over their performances here, though each is in fine form. Both play dual roles, making their characters and their characters’ characters very distinct but also working to emphasize the similarities between them. Anna and Sarah are both somewhat withdrawn women who keep their emotions and motivations beneath the surface, leaving you guessing. Mike and Charles are slightly more impulsive, more demonstrative in terms of what they’re thinking and feeling. Watching Streep and Irons mix it up as both Mike and Anna and as Charles and Sarah really demonstrates the wide range of these two actors’ talents.

Director Karel Reisz, who died in 2002, seems to have been somewhat forgotten, which is a real shame since he left behind a very fine filmography. His style isn’t flashy; he’s the kind of director who stands back and gives the characters room to breathe, who doesn’t intrude on them in order to punctuate scenes with personal flourishes. The French Lieutenant’s Woman wouldn’t be half the movie it is without his guidance and he deserves a lot of credit for the fact that it works so well.

Watch a trailer for the movie here: