The Governess

The Governess
by Sandra Goldbacher

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Movie Reviews of The Governess

Movie Review: A window to a beautiful--and beautified--world
Summary: 5 Stars

Outside, unfortunately, is Whitechapel--and it breaks into the happy celebration, when Rosina's father is stuck with a knife in the street outside. Here, it is possible to see the clash of the sheltered Jewish inside and the brutal outside. Rosina's mother, shaken, is whispering: "We do not get murdered... We do not have debts..."

Faced with the prospect of marrying a rather repellent fish merchant (a very similar character to Sholem Aleichem's disgusting Reb Leizer Wulf), Rosina chooses employment instead--as a governess. Of course, she over-dramatizes, and makes up for herself as Christian name as possible: Mary Blackchurch. Named so, she is hired by a gentile family in the Isle of Skye; the mother is boring and bored, dreaming of London, where she had never been, as if it is her rightful place to be there; the daughter--Rosina's charge--is a bit devilish; the father dabbles in "science" (in photography, Rosina later discovers)--and suffers because he cannot capture the images he makes, having no fixation: they fade, after a day or so, into nothingness; and the son has been sent down from Oxford after having been found in an opium den with a prostitute (supposedly). There, Rosina will become her employer's assistant--and mistress.

I loved the casting of Minnie Driver as Rosina--she has the archetypal Jewish beauty, and her black dresses and Spanish mantillas contrast beautifully with her mistress' ridiculous hairdos. Tom Wilkinson as Cavendish, Rosina's employer and love interest, I did not love quite as much. There was very little chemistry between them from the beginning; had Cavendish possessed a bit more charm, you could write it off on superficial attraction. Here, you only had to wonder what on earth has she found in him--enough to overcome her modesty? He looks tired and old and ruffled...

Rosina's exploits into photography are beautifully done--from the subject matter of Cavendish's experiments (mostly dead birds' wings), to her discovery of the saline fixation (during her lonely Passover celebration, she spills a bit of salt water onto one of Cavendish's fading prints, and it keeps the picture from fading), to the photo sessions in which they photograph each other, to Rosina's later work in London, where she uses a camera obscura to capture the beauty of her own people.

In general, the film itself is a bit like a camera obscura--one has the feeling of looking into dark box, and a world, wholly unexpected and wildly beautiful, is looking back at you. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the early Victorian era.

Summary of The Governess