May 27, 2020 – The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981) Criterion Channel
Whatever happened to John Fowles? I read The French Lieutenant’s Woman and other novels by Fowles back in the 1980s and loved them. I loved the playful postmodernism of the novel: how Fowles could at once tell a gothic love story set in the past and comment on that story with a modern sensibility.
Fowles’ novels were widely read and respected at the time, but now seem almost completely forgotten. I never hear anyone talking about them now or read anyone writing about them. I am not sure why Fowles has been forgotten. Maybe there is something particular about his books or maybe something about postmodernism more generally. I don’t hear anyone talking about John Barth – another postmodern favorite of mine – today either. Please let me know in the comments if you too read John Fowles back in the day and if you have any theories about why he has been largely forgotten today.
I am due for a reread of his books. When some time has passed since I have read a novel, I remember the feeling I had reading the book and perhaps an image or two but almost none of the details of plot or character. I am not sure if this is a blessing or a curse – I would like to remember more, but on the positive side, I do get to read the novel again almost fresh. I plan to start my Fowles reread with The Magus, which I think was my favorite of his novels back in the day.
I am remembering John Fowles because Wendey and I watched the movie The French Lieutenant’s Woman. I remember this movie being well received at the time, getting several Academy Award nominations and winning a Golden Globe for Meryl Streep, though looking back now, it appears the reviews were more mixed than I remember. Wendey and I were mixed about the movie as well. The French Lieutenant’s Woman is beautifully shot and very well acted. I forgot Meryl Streep was ever this young, and she is very beautiful in the film. Both she and Jeremy Irons are excellent in their roles.
Playwright Harold Pinter wrote the script for The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and he faced a big challenge adapting a book whose appeal stems largely from the voice of the narrator, who comments on the story and the author’s choices as the story moves forward. Pinter responds to this challenge by writing two different stories into the movie: the love story of Sarah and Charles in nineteenth-century England and the love story of the actors playing Sarah and Charles in the contemporary filming of that nineteenth-century love story. The novel has three endings, while the movie manages to have two endings: one for the contemporary love story and one for the love story in the film within the film.
In the end, I liked but did not love The French Lieutenant’s Woman, the movie. While the film-within-the-film was a clever idea, it left me feeling distant from the happenings in the film without enough intellectual playfulness to compensate.