Subject: REVIEW: TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY

From: [email-masked] (Robert Biddle)
Date: 9 Aug 91 17:03:30 GMT

[Followups directed to rec.arts.movies.]

			     TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY
		       A film review by Robert Biddle
		     This review is in the public domain

Screenplay and Direction by Anthony Minghella, United Kingdom 1990

     Jamie is dead, and Nina is devastated.  She keeps up, just, with
everyday life -- her job, her house, her sister -- but inside her heart
has stopped; she feels abandoned, lonely, miserable, angry.  She
recounts to a psychologist that sometimes she feels Jamie's presence,
watching over her, looking out for her.  Then one day at home -- in
between visits of her acquisitive sister, an amorous neighbour, and the
rat exterminator -- Jamie is back.  There are few explanations, and Nina
is hesitant to believe, but soon the funny silly domestic happiness of
life together has warmed the whole house.  Again they play silly word
games, again he plays the cello and she the piano.  It's not quite real,
but it is perfect.  But does reality have an edge even perfection cannot
match?

     The true concern of the film is the connection between love and
magic, and it is very successful at evoking empathy for this experience.
The sincerity touched me, and I was not alone in the audience in this
respect.  People cried.  I am writing this review a few weeks after
seeing the film, and am now more detached.  But memory has a problem
with emotional intensity, too easily recalled and it derails normal
life: another point of the film.

     The greatest strength of the film is the acting.  Nina is played by
Juliet Stevenson with disarmingly real feeling.  The setting also works
well, I thought.  Nina lives in a collapsing house in the suburbs of
London, and works as a linguist for a half-baked private translations
agency.  The film is very reminiscent of the British "television play"
genre:  unpretentious but honest -- so very different from the American
"made-for-tv movie" genre.

     My review would probably conclude about here if it weren't for the
comparisons that cry out to be made with some other recent films.  In
the past year I have seen three films that centre about the a lover's
death, and subsequent return as a ghost: the British TRULY, MADLY,
DEEPLY, and American GHOST, and the New Zealand LINDA'S BODY, by
performance group "The Front Lawn."  These are all successful films, but
each is very different from the others.

     LINDA'S BODY is a surreal story of everyday life in slow motion
turned upside down, inside out, and set to music.  Typical Front Lawn,
it's main concern is the way in which the everyday and the magic world
are interwoven.  GHOST is a romantic-comedy-thriller, reminiscent of
French cinema success at that mix.  The main concern with the magical in
GHOST is the exploration of newly discovered state's mechanics and
logic.  TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY is about love, not romance.  About magic,
not logic.  It is about the *real* world, and has something to say.

     Another important difference is in the role of the people in each
of the films.  LINDA'S BODY is like an extended music video: the story,
music, and characters are all connected, but somehow detached, and there
is a clear addressing of the audience.  As I've mentioned, I thought
highly of the acting in TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY.  While watching the film,
I recall wondering what would happen should Demi Moore and Patrick
Swayze see this film: would they suddenly wonder why *they* were paid so
well?  Since then, it has occurred to me that Moore and Swayze in fact
perform very well in GHOST, but that their performance is less like
acting, and more like modelling.

     TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY has flaws, mostly in the form of loose ends.
However, it concerns some important subjects -- love, death, and  magic
-- and does so with humour, warmth, and great sincerity.   I think it's
well worth seeing.

Footnote:  The last role I saw Juliet Stevenson in was that of Rosalind
Franklin in LIFE STORY (discovery of structure of DNA).  I've often
wondered why this film isn't better known.  Did it have a different
title in North America?  Acting by Stevenson and by Jeff Goldblum is
very good, direction is acute and fast-paced, and the result is one of
the best films I know about real Science.  The film seems to have been
made for the BBC television series HORIZON, "in association with the
Arts and Entertainment Network."