Ok, now that I’ve got your attention....

Well, let’s face it, you wouldn’t be flocking to a review entitled ‘The Bostonians – A slow paced historical adaptation of Henry James’ novel set amongst the repressed social foibles of 19th centaury middle class America women, which pays careful attention to period costume.’ now would you?

Would you? Ok, so perhaps you would, being the conscientious, cerebral, open-minded reviewer that you are, but for us the rest of us, the fickle masses who live from one fast paced thrill-filled moment to the next, the Hollywood hordes who gravitate with herd-like instinct to merest suggestion of a titillating frolic featuring our favorite screen idols.... I thought I’d take a little ‘creative liberty’ with this title and glam it up a little. And, if you have seen this film, you’ll know it sure as hell needs as much ‘glamming-up’ as it can get.

But before you get all huffy and depart to read the 367th review of ‘Shrek 2’ (I know that’s where you were going...) I haven’t enticed you here on completely false pretences. This film does star Christopher Reeve, who is, and ever will be, the original, iconic Superman, (although there were no phone booths in the early 1900’s so he sadly remains in his moustached alter-ego for the entire film). And yes, there really are some distinctive lesbian undertones, which, although not fully (nor even partially) explored, can definitely be detected if you look really really hard, and see every ambiguous statement, glance or eyebrow raise as a blatant innuendo. And finally, your honor, in summating my defense, this really is a period drama.

(But I'll admit that the word 'romp' was pushing it somewhat...)

Anyways, the review.

Ehem, yes well...


The story so far..

The place is Boston, the time is the turn of the centaury (the last one), the setting is the rising profile of the suffragette movement amidst the oppressive hostility of a patriarchal society and as we join the action (and I use that word in it’s least active, Henry James sense) a young faith healer’s daughter is causing quite a stir on the séance circuit.

Ok, now back up from the edge of your seat there before you have an accident. Enthralling though this is, it’s no cause for reckless posture..

The young girl, Verena Tarrant (played by the intriguing, intense if slightly irritating Madeleine Potter), happens to be a gifted and compelling orator who manages to attract something of a crowd at her father’s private séances (the in-thing in the 1900’s apparently, akin to the Tupperware parties of the late 70’s – so I gather). And this young missy has a bit of a bee in her bonnet (and she really does have a bonnet too) about a radical new concept called ‘women’s lib’ – well, it was called the ‘suffragette movement’ back then, but it’s basically the same thing. Her mind awash with illusions of grandeur and her heart aflame with ideas of social revolution she speaks in ambitious tones of the equal rights of women in a ‘modern’ society.

So impassioned is her oration that she instantly captures the attention, and subsequent rivaling affections of two members of the audience. The first is Olive Chancellor, (played by the Oscar nominated Venessa Redgrave) a staunch social reformer with one thing on her mind. Social reform, of course. Oh, and Verena Tarrant. So, that’s two things on her mind then. Although she will try to argue that those desires are one in the same, ie, she believes that the young Verena has a gift of public speaking which can bring the case for social change to a much wider audience. However, the more astute viewer, may be able to detect something altogether more ‘personal’ in Olive’s pursuit of Verena, and you wouldn’t be the first to speculate that there are shades of the love ‘that dare not speak it’s name’ at play, which, sadly, are never realized during the film. (Not even in the out-takes on the DVD... gutting.)

And it would seem that, whatever her true motivation, Olive is set to get her way as she soon persuades Verena’s parents to let Verena live with her as she seeks to mould her into the perfect voice for the suffragette movement. Verena willingly agrees, and although not quite sure what she wants, a driving ambition to be famous urges her closer to Olive.

And so the two women are all set to settle down into a homely life free of the trappings of male interference and all those complicated emotions that accompany it.


Is it a bird? Is it a plane..?

Queue the arrival of Olive’s cousin, a Southern lawyer with good old fashioned male chauvinist principles and more charm than you can shake an ivory cane at, Basil Ransom. I mean, come on, even the name itself rhymes with ‘hansom’. Make no doubt, this man would have young ladies swooning in the midday sun as he tipped his hat to them whilst passing in the street, and as for the moustache, well, mothers, lock up your daughters! And as if all that wasn’t enough, Ransom is played by none other than Christopher Reeve, who adds the looks and the sheer charisma needed to give Olive sleepless nights as she frets over the battle for Verena’s affections and loyalty, and young Verena sleepless nights for, well.. entirely different reasons.

Olive, sensing that Verena’s resolve to a life of celibate campaigning has been seriously weakened by the arrival of her smooth talking southern cousin, quickly whisks her away to her country cottage in the hope of restoring a measure of chasteness to her hot collared protégée. But once Basil Ransom picks up a trail, he’s a not easily shaken from his quarry and before long he pops up in the sand dunes and Verena is cast once more into inner turmoil over split allegiances and overwhelming desire.

Ransom has no such inner struggle, he is an uncomplicated man of simple needs and has but one thing on his mind. (Ahh.. the sweet simplicity of maleness)

His pursuit of Verena is so single-minded and relentless that in modern terms he’d be looking at a hefty restraining order... but this is the good old days, when men like him, can deliver lines like this and not only get away with it, but get the girl too! (Read in a soft yet deeply masculine southern accent):

"I don't believe you mean what you preach. No, no. It's just your sweet nature. You always want to please someone. Miss Chancellor, your parents. Whoever else is dear to you. But it's not really you.
You're meant for something different. You're meant for privacy. You're meant for love. For me...”


You had me at “I don’t believe you mean what you preach”....



The plot thickens, a bit

But Ransom is not to have it all his own way, and Olive manages to tear Verena away once more from his charmingly bigoted embrace and back to Boston for a final showdown of wills at large suffragette rally. Here, in the final scene, Verena is expected to make a triumphant victory speech, asserting once and for all her alliance with the cause and her rejection of Basil Ransom and all he represents.

And yet, as she is about to go on stage and burry her inner demons which tell her that a life of subservience with a hansom hunk of a man is better than whittling away her days with an old spinster and an eternity of cups of tea (for this, dear readers, really is her dichotomous dilemma) – she sees none other than Ransom himself seated in the audience. She freezes, this is it, the moment of truth, can she do it?

Will Basil’s testosterone fueled advances beat Olive’s pheromonal appeal to the lifelong fraternity of sisterhood?

Will Ransom be able to find a phone booth in time to change into his super alter ego and woo Verena back with his flapping cape and bright red underwear worn over blue spandex pants?

Will Olive be able to change her name to ‘Thelma’ and whisk Verena away in a ‘ 66 Thunderbird towards the nearest canyon in time to catch the sunset?

Or will Verena finally decide she’s had enough of all this crap and split town to find her own emancipation in a blurry haze of drugs, drink and sex before waking up one day in the midst of a mid-life crisis, wondering how the hell she ended up with 6 kids, living in a trailer park and married to a PC technician called Hank?..............

Can you feel the tension yet? Can you feel the breath-stopping suspense of it all?...

Actually, all jesting aside it really is rather a surprisingly tense conclusion. And I won’t ruin it for you (because I can tell that you’re ordering a copy from Amazon as you read this...)

Ok, so this isn’t going to be everybodies cup of tea. But if you can overcome prejudices against anything set prior to WWII and not staring Orlando Bloom, and lay aside your instinctive 20th centaury politically corrected mindsets, (Henry James was not feminisms biggest ally I’ll warn you now, please don’t show this film as a morale booster at this years ‘Women You-nited against Men’ rally)(if you’re going, which I am, in disguise of course) then you might just enjoy this for what it clearly is; a beautifully crafted and carefully adapted piece of period drama from two masters of the genre. Ismail Merchant (producer) and James Ivory (director) – more famously known as simply ‘Merchant Ivory’ are the undisputed heavyweight champions of period drama adaptation, and although this isn’t their best work by far, with films such as ‘Remains of the Day’, ‘Howard’s End’ and ‘A Room with a View’ under their belts you know you’re going to get a faithful and lovingly rendered film.


The film of the book

Not having read the book I can’t report on just how faithful this adaptation is, but I have it on good word that it’s pretty darn close to the original story. And that’s no small achievement as Henry James’ writing is known to be ornate, and at times long winded, with much of the ‘action’ being of the internal, ‘thought but not said (and certainly not done!)’ variety. Often involving long exchanges in which absolutely nothing happens or is said. All very intense, but not scoring highly in the ‘gripping thriller’ department. Put it this way, the special effect budget on most Henry James adaptations is dwarfed by the tea and biscuits budget, and you’re never likely to see the words ‘Jerry Bruckheimer’ on the back of a Merchant Ivory film cover. And perhaps that’s no bad thing. Of course there’s a place for large special effects budgets that would dwarf the entire combined budgets of every Merchant Ivory film for a single scene, and that place is normally a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.

And who needs special effects when you’ve got Reeves and Redgrave performing their lovingly recreated 19th centaury cotton socks off? These really are admirable performances from both actors, and along with sumptuous sets and lavish costumes there’s a lot more life to this drama than first glances might suggest.

Unfortunately the junior leading lady finds herself both figuratively and literally dwarfed by the two senior stars. Out classed and out performed, Potter struggles to shine in a role which requires far more presence than her youthful years can muster. The premise of the plot requires Verena’s character to posses enough magnetism to simultaneously draw two diametrically opposed characters into a battle of wills for her soul. In this sense I think the film failed, as, after a short time Verena’s character began to grate, and I became increasingly less convinced that she would become the centre of anyone’s attention, let alone such diverse and strong willed characters as Olive and Basil. However the ongoing battle of values, charm and passion which engages Reeves and Redgrave for most of the film is effective enough to draw the viewer in and cause us to care somewhat about the final outcome, if not for Verena herself, for her two rival aficionados. There is also a suggestion that what began as a struggle over the affections of a girl became a conflict of principles between the two central protagonists in which Venera is simply the pawn. Given Potter’s performance here, it’s this version I’d rather believe.


Erotic subtexts?

Despite, and possibly because of, the ultra-subdued expression of anything overtly sexual in the narrative, the whole film is charged with a latent erotic potential which is never quite fulfilled. Obviously in James day writing about an openly explicit lesbian relationship was simply not the done thing, but even if he could have done, I doubt that was his intension. The relationship between Olive and Venera is complex to say the least, and although sexual undertones are clearly present, none less so than in Olive’s intense jealously of Basil’s open advances, these are kept well under wraps, but done so in a way which appears consistent with the characters and not simply to appease the censors of the day.

Some reviews never comment on it, and doubtless many viewers never pick up on it, but it doesn’t take a huge amount of perception to realize that it’s there, but it’s probably best that it stays in the wings as any attempt by Merchant Ivory to ‘reveal’ it would most likely have resulted in a butcherous massacre of the original text, and that really aint their style. (If you do want to see an example of an adapted ‘expose’ in which the director takes gratuitous liberties with non-explicit erotic subplots from an original text – for research purposes only of course – check out John Duigan’s adaptation of Jean Rhys’ ‘The Wide Sargasso Sea’)


In conclusion (why I wrote this)

Lesbian liaisons aside, this isn’t actually a bad film, and there is plenty here to enjoy if you happen to find yourself in the unusual situation of having no choice but to watch it (say for example you’ve recently lost both your legs and my arms in an unfortunate culinary accident and are therefore housebound and a copy of ‘The Bostonians’ has got jammed in the VCR – it could happen!)


So, thus ends my first entry for an Epinions official write off with the ‘June First Review Sweepstakes Write-Off’ Erm.. provided someone out there makes the unthinkable and clearly misguided decision to rate this review ‘Very Helpful’.

When approaching this write off I soon discovered, to my dismay, that to actually manage to be the first person to review a newly released film one has to be so quick off the mark as to review a film before it’s even been released. And in fact I plan to take this ‘predictive reviewing’ to a new level by reviewing films before they’ve even been made, so watch this space for my forthcoming review of ‘Star Wars Episode XXII – Attack of the killer mutant phantom space bees’.

Alternatively you can review a film considered so dire or inconsequential by the entire Epinions community that no one has previously stooped low enough, or rummaged deep enough into the depth of the abyss that is the bottom shelf at Blockbusters to every review it.

This review falls into the latter category, incase you hadn’t guessed already.....



Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age