06 February 2014, The Tablet

The Invisible Woman


Cinema

 
A costume drama about a love affair between the Victorian literary superstar Charles Dickens and a little-known actress raises certain expectations. There will be strictures and conventions, agonised looks and perhaps a deathbed scene. There will be the suggestion of perfect union or understanding despite the pressures of celebrity, a film à clef  perhaps to one of the more famous novels, something attuned to twenty-first-century notions of romance. This will perhaps be the Secret Love of The Man Who Wrote Great Expectations. Then again, this is a film directed by Ralph Fiennes, who also plays Dickens and, as his debut feature, Coriolanus, demonstrated, has a rare skill for the two-handed trick of actor/director and a tendency to temper passion with intellect. The Invisible Wo
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