Movie Reviews for Fingersmith

Fingersmith

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Movie Reviews of Fingersmith

Movie Review: The book is AMAZING -- the movie is NOT
Summary: 2 Stars

I absolutely loved reading Fingersmith. It is an incredible, complex, beautiful book with unexpected twists, rich characters, and a wonderful, suspenseful plot. It is one of my favorite books.

I was therefore very disappointed when I watched this movie. Basically the movie, though mostly sticking to Sarah Waters' plot, destroys the magic of the book. The pace is wrong, the whole thing plods along drudgingly. I had to stop watching it after the first disk, and couldn't bring myself to finish watching it for months. To be fair, the second disk is better than the first, but not by much. And it's not that I just dislike movie adaptations of great books. The film version of Tipping the Velvet is excellent. It's merely that this adaptation of Fingersmith is NOT.

My recommendation is to skip the terrible movie and read the book!

Movie Review: Another Lesbian Betrayal Flick
Summary: 2 Stars

I admit that I've not read this book and that I watched the movie purely to enjoy the love scenes which were well-reviewed. While the love scenes are indeed sweet and well done, they are ruined by the ending. Why is it so hard to find a film with sensual and sincere lesbian love scenes that are not invalidated at the end by death, doom, or betrayal?

Movie Review: A mystery within a puzzle wrapped inside an enigma...
Summary: 4 Stars

Fingersmith (Aisling Walsh, 2005)

Fingersmith, actually a two-part British TV miniseries, came to America as a three-hour DVD. Based on Sarah Waters' novel of the same name, it details the dealings of Susan Smith (Sally Hawkins, recently of The Painted Veil), a thief (thus the title) in London in the nineteenth century who becomes involved in a complicated scheme to swindle a large sum of money out of Maud Lilly (The Others' Elaine Cassidy). Smith, through a series of intrigues, becomes Lilly's handmaiden, but the two of them quickly develop a friendship on top of that, and possibly something more (I haven't read the novel, so I don't know if it's explicit there; it's certainly implied here). The trick is, there's a great deal more to Maud Lilly than anyone realizes; once you hit the halfway point, the surprises here come thick and fast, and what looked to be a simple crime story blossoms into an all-out mystery/thriller that I was in no way expecting. And what a pleasant surprise it is.

It helps, of course, that both Hawkins and Cassidy are almost painfully beautiful, and that, plus the script's implications as to their relationship, certainly helps propel the first half of the film, which is half crime story and half Merchant/Ivory comedy of manners (a genre of film to which I have never been able to warm myself). At the halfway point, though, I stopped noticing, and for someone like me, that's saying something. How many red herrings can you throw into one script? How many little side perversions can you add without things becoming too overloaded for anyone to see your plot? How many twists and turns, how many character revelations, the whole bit? Yes, it does end up playing the Vitorian-melodrama card so loved by writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne (I heard a pretty strong echo of the last line of House of the Seven Gables in the last few minutes of this film, though it's not quite as deus ex machina as Hawthorne allowed himself; still, it's awfully convenient), but it's such an enchanting thrill ride getting there I actually didn't half mind. There's a great deal of fun to be had here, even if you're not a big fan of Victorian costume drama; a very entertaining little film, well worth watching. *** ?

Movie Review: Totally perplexed
Summary: 2 Stars

I never read the book. I rented the DVD and while I enjoyed the body of the movie, the ending and many parts of the movie left me saying, "Huh?! What's up?". To me the ending ruined the movie. What happened? Why did that happen? And what was the purpose of it?? It didn't make sense to me. What did Maud & Gentleman have to gain by it? What did they need Sue for if that's what they'd planned? I'm just confused by it.